ark lighting his eye brightened into baleful flame, but she met
it calmly. An indomitable spirit confronted one equally indomitable, and
his was the first to succumb. Turning from her, Hazen took out pencil
and paper from his pocket, and, crossing to the window with that same
peculiar and oscillating motion of which he seemed unconscious, or which
he found it impossible to subdue, he wrote a line, folded it, and before
even Harper was aware of his purpose threw up the sash and flung it out,
uttering a quick, sharp whistle as he did so.

"What's that you're up to?" shouted the lawyer, rushing to the window and
peering over the other's shoulder into the open space below, from which a
man was just disappearing.

"Am I a prisoner of the police that you should ask me that?" returned
Hazen, haughtily.

"No, but you should be," retorted Harper. "I don't like your ways, Hazen.
I don't like what you and your sister have said about the Cause and the
conscienceless obedience exacted from its members. I don't like any of
it; least of all this passing over of poor Bela's name to one whose duty
it will possibly be to make trouble for her."

Hazen smiled and moved from the window. No one there had ever seen such a
smile before, and the oppression which it brought heightened Georgian's
fear to terror.

"Let be!" she cried, lifting her hands towards Harper in inconceivable
anxiety. "A quarrel with him will not help you and it may greatly injure
_me_. Alfred, what am I to expect? Something dreadful, I can see. Your
face is not the face of one who forgives, or who sees in a gift of money
an adequate recompense for a cowardly withdrawal."

"You read rightly," said he. "Your fortune will be accepted by the Chief,
but he will never forget the cowardice. What faith can he put in one who
prefers her own happiness to the general good? You must prepare for
punishment."

"Punishment!" broke scornfully from Harper's lips.

She hushed him with a look before which even he stood aghast.

"You will only waste words," she cried. "If he says punishment, I may
expect punishment." And turning back to Ransom, in a burst of longing and
passion, she raised her eyes to him again, saying, "You do not forgive
because you do not realize my danger. But you will realize it when I am
gone."

Ransom, under a sudden releasement of the tension of doubt and awe which
had hitherto held him speechless, gave her one wild stare, then caught
her to his breast.