Following Mr. Cornelius, Dangerfield went down the hall for an examination. At the bottom, he remained skeptical, despite “the baron’s” assurance that the window had been locked and that the catch was now sprung. There were scratches on the surface of the iron lock of the chest and a spot of oil on the floor beside it. “The baron” was in a high state of excitement. The window-latch, he insisted, could have been sprung by an ordinary knife.

“But there are only two other rooms which give on the roof,” said Dangerfield; “Miss Quirley’s——”

“No; not that.”

“And Drinkwater’s, which has been empty for weeks.”

“Perhaps.”

“That is certain.”

“If so—why, then, don’t they put it in rent again?” said Mr. Cornelius, shaking his head. Nothing could convince him that an attempted burglary had not taken place. In fact, he confided the fact that he had several times had a suspicion that attempts had taken place before.

To Dangerfield, the proof seemed slight—what was there in the denuded room to entice a thief? But, in order to humor the old fellow, he nodded wisely and promised to aid him with a careful search on the morrow.

He left him and went back to his room, but the tyranny of insomnia still holding him, he changed into slippers, opened the door and, in an effort at physical fatigue, began to walk the long murky corridor. Alone, in his mechanical journey, back and forth, along the creaky way, wheeling at the same points so mechanically that he fell to counting his steps, he saw all at once, under the door of Inga’s room, a tiny ray of light come out. She was there, awake; she had heard him—was waiting, perhaps, wrung by the same torture which dominated him, feeling the same ache of separation. She was there—waiting!

His imagination began to whirl again. He had an impulse to break through things, to fling obstacles aside, to hurl down all that intervened; and yet he hesitated. A dozen times he approached the door in an angry revulsion against his self-imposed test, and a dozen times passed on. Once he stopped, leaning against the wall, staring at the knob, which seemed to turn under his eyes. She was there, she must be there, waiting miserably. The sensation was so acute that he felt her living, breathing presence on the other side of the door, her hand waiting on the knob that seemed to turn under his eyes! And yet he went away and continued up and down the hall, staring at the same points, counting the steps—up and down—until the sickly dawn flowed in like an inundation, and still the crack under her door shone like the blazing edge of a sword blade....

The next afternoon, his model dismissed in despair, Dangerfield sat, head in his hands, staring at the meaningless canvas. He could not work. He had not worked since the day he had sent Inga out of his life.

The drag of sleepless hours lay on him, and the profound void of the victory he had won in the long marches of the night. Sitting there, in graven silence, he asked himself:

“Why didn’t I go in?”

And when he had put the question to himself again and again, he understood. He had not yielded, because the need of the inspiration of a great love in his life was deeper than his need of love itself, because in the fulness of his maturity he comprehended that, in his artist’s ideality, only a love that meant aspiration and veneration could restore life to him, and that this love he must protect and hold sacred even against itself.

It was not that he did not comprehend the essential innocence of the girl’s offer, or the nobility of her courage, but that, deeper than his intellectual comprehension, he knew that in him a moral fire existed which he had not suspected until the love which had impelled him with longing to the charming figure of the girl had illuminated its depths. Despite all his reasons, despite a mental defiance of conventions, he knew that what called to him from a hidden consciousness was unselfishness, and by that token he knew, too, how much his whole being, his day, and his hope of the future loved and clung to her.

What had she felt these miserable days? He knew that she, too, had suffered. He had seen it in the stricken tensity of her silent, deep eyes, when they had passed in the hall, or when they had met in Tootles’ studio, where she went often now, to be near him silently, no doubt. And between them what a ridiculous barrier intervened—a distorted conception of liberty, born in the intimate tragedy of the past, fed by the ill-considered doctrines of the day—Yet at times he wondered if that were all, if there were not, below her avowed reasons, causes he could not divine. What did he know about her? The longer he had known her, the deeper into the mists her figure had receded. A few hints she had dropped—of her home, of her father; a few scraps of gossip about the young sculptor who had been here before him; a few indications; Costello’s recognition in the dance-hall; the haunting feeling, which had come to him in his days of distress, that there was something in all his exactions and struggles which was not new to her; the strange feeling that had possessed him at times that some one else was present at their side; her own calm insistence that what had passed before did not touch them now—all these confusing memories closed behind her, forbidding the return toward the past as though with impenetrable velvet folds of oblivion. Yet the strangeness of it all fascinated him—the audacity that had borne her where she was, the untamed pride which lingered in the slow-breaking, confident smile that suffused the room and his being with happiness; the echoes of hidden waters which sounded in her low, modulated voice, that had power to dispel hot fevers and bring him the cool of tranquillity, as though gentle fingers had passed across his forehead; the steady depths of the sea-blue eyes, which had looked gravely out upon the storm and the sunshine of life—all this had him in its cruel-sweet spell. His ears heard nothing but remembered echoes, and his eyes were clouded with the obsession of one figure, slender and supple, with the grace of an untamed animal, whose motions were like the rhythm of sweet sounds. He suffered so keenly the torture of these eluding charms that he sprang up with a groan, crying her name, and, all at once, he saw her there in the room, like a shadow, gazing down at him.

He did not dare to speak. He stood silently, his glance fastened on hers, across the little lapse of golden carpet which lay between them like stretches and stretches of space. He did not dare to speak; he was afraid of what her first words would bring, and this nameless terror was so overwhelming that at last he fell back in his chair and covered his face with his hands.

Then he was faintly aware that she was speaking, that her body was swaying toward him, like a perfume spreading through the room.

“Mr. Dan, I can’t—I can’t bear it!”

The next moment he had sprung up; she was in his arms, her head pressed against his shoulder, trembling like a child, crying:

“Oh, no, I can’t bear it; I can’t bear to see you suffer.”

“Yes; that is true,” he said solemnly—waiting.

“I was there last night behind the door,” she said, in a whisper. “Oh, why didn’t you call me?”

“Why didn’t you come?” he said, with a quick breath.

Her lips moved as though she were about to speak, and then stopped.

“You were not serious, that was not the true reason—what you said about marriage,” he said tumultuously.

She disengaged herself from his arms and raised her eyes to his face, furrowed with the sleepless pain which she had drawn across it. She looked at him thus, a long wait, her lip wavering. Then she said, without averting her eyes:

“Must it be so? You still insist?”

His answer was a cry, inarticulate, wrung from him despite his effort at control, at finding her still unreconciled.

“Wait,” she said hastily. She looked away from him and then down and about her forehead and the slender lips the lines drew in hardness. “I can’t; I cannot see you suffer. I know that—that is all I know!” she said desperately, and she flung back her head as though flinging sudden tears from her eyes.

“Inga!” he burst out, but she stopped him quietly, her fingers over his lips.

“I will do as you wish,” she said firmly, “on one condition.” She seemed to be thinking a moment, and all at once she continued rapidly. “You are an honorable man—I know that—I knew that last night—you will do what you say you will do. Look at me, Mr. Dan; promise me on your honor, that whenever I come to you and ask you—you will give me back my liberty, that you will set me free.”

“Whenever?” he said slowly, staring at her.

She hesitated, and her eyes seemed searching into his with faraway questioning.

“If I come to you, then,” she said carefully.

“If you ever come to me with such a demand,” he said slowly, “I shall do everything to give you back your freedom. That is a promise. I would have done so, anyhow.”

She nodded as though satisfied. Then with a dignity that held him breathless, she placed her hand on his and said as though to her the words constituted a ceremony,

“Mr. Dan, your life will be my life. I will have no other thought but you in my heart—and no other desire but to give you what is in me to give.”

“Then—you will marry me,” he said slowly.

“Whenever you wish.”

“This is final, Inga? You will not change?”

“You did not understand,” she said quietly. “Nothing a stranger can say can make me more yours than I am now.”

“And you love me?” he cried tempestuously. “Inga, that is what I want to hear you say. You love me so that you can’t think of anything else, so that you can’t keep from me, so that to be out of my sight is torture?”

She caught her breath at the frenzy in his voice.

“Would I be here if I didn’t?” she said.

He stood away from her a moment, scanning her tense face greedily, satisfied at last. Yes; she loved him, beyond her pride, beyond her stubborn beliefs, beyond her fears even! She loved him so that nothing stood against his need that cried out for her!

He put out his arms, swept away by a confusing intoxication. She seemed to sink into his embrace, the moist, warm lips, half parted, which met his, were almost lifeless in their sudden frailty, but the hands against his throat were like ice. He hung on this first kiss as though in it lay his salvation; a strange, terrifying contact in which he seemed to be drawing her up to him, taking from her not only all her love but all her strength, all her youth, all the pulsing vigor of her body, its softness and its freshness to quicken his tired veins. He had taken everything, and yet it seemed to him that she had given nothing. He lifted her face to his, gazing into it with a hunger that had awakened never to be satisfied. Her lips were smiling, but in her eyes was the sadness of renunciation, the melancholy of the gray sea when the heavy winter weighs upon the land, and the bitter mists creep across the face of the day—the sadness of the sea that holds the secrets of time.

“Ah, Inga,” he cried, with sudden divination, “don’t look like that! Believe me, it’ll be you, only you—all my life!”

She looked into his eyes and smiled, and while she smiled, the tears rose and fell.