Some time after four o'clock the brougham, curbed overlong to pace sedately the interlacing mazes of the Bronx, gave a little start and shudder of pleasure to find itself at last heading into open country, with a soft deep purr crescendo flirted the dust of White Plains from its tyres and sped away, ventre-À-terre, upon the highway which, skirting the eastern shores of the Kensico Reservoir, wanders with such a luring random air the lake country of Westchester.

That day, true to the type of those that render Autumn in the Northern states the fairest season of the four, had been luminous of sky and languorous with reminiscent warmth. But now—as in a field of pastel tinting ineffably pellucid its sun dipped low to hills whose shadows like vast purple wraiths crept sluggishly across the valleys and their embayed waters, small lakes as still and bright and bleakly blue as plaques of polished steel——now as the dim haze of Indian Summer took on shades of lavender ever deeper and more tender, blotted up all distances and robbed the wooded hillsides of their flaming splendour—premonitions of evening chill lent tang to air aromatic with incense of dead leaves a-smoulder in uncounted pyres.

Lanyard leaned forward and offered to put up the windows at the chauffeur's back, but Eve de Montalais gave a slight sign of dissent. "I like it better so, I love this air—if it's not too cold for you, my Michael."

He smiled a negative, and taking the rug from its rail made her snug in it. She lifted her eyes to his in lovely acknowledgement and, emboldened by the closing dusk and the loneliness of that little-travelled way, nestled nearer, cheek to his shoulder.

Thus, pensive with the gentle melancholy distilled by that hour of dying beauty, symbolic of the cruel haste with which all beauty passes, the lovers sat a while in silence; as, for that matter, they had, barring a few brief interludes of gossip upon indifferent topics, ever since leaving New York; not that either had too little to say . . .

"Michael: tell me you are happy."

He had to bend his head to hear that whisper, her lips brushed his cheek with a caress so fugitive and light they might have been a moth's fluttering wings.

"Never so happy, Eve."

"Tell me it shall be always so with us. Surely we can make it so . . ."

For all answer she had the tightened pressure of his arm; and, a little chilled with disappointment, she said no more till, after several minutes, Lanyard was moved to wonder aloud: "This country is all strange to my eyes. Where are you taking me?"

"To a far-away place I hope you'll like."

"How should I not, seeing it is your choice?"

"A little old inn, Michael, tucked away in the loneliest hills. We can be quiet there, and talk."

"Talk?" Lanyard made a sad stab at humour, hoping thereby to divert her. "Is it kind to encourage my besetting vice?"

"I think," Eve answered, "you have something to tell me tonight."

"But you know it already," he parried poorly in his disquietude—"I think you have heard too often what I have to tell you."

As if he hadn't spoken, as if involuntarily giving her heart voice, in a tone curiously dispassionate yet determined Eve replied: "We must not part."

Again he dared not trust his tongue . . .

The afterglow, pulsing through a hundred changes, faded, fainted, and contracted, till a long, clear pool of emeraude alone defined the foot of the sky, the profile of those hills within whose pleats night hung already close and breathless. Through its dark, across gulfs unguessable, lost lights winked, beaconing unknown heights. And the spreading surfaces of still water on every hand, so thickly shadowed as to be more felt than seen, grew wan by degrees with shine of stars.

Smartly tooled, with the sureness of a swallow's flight the car pursued its fan of yellow light over the intricate meander of the road, its windings, dips and soarings, while ever and again a bend ahead or the summit of some sharp ascent would take sudden shape in a sheen of spectral blue, heralding the advent of twin minor moons which, bearing down upon the brougham with a startling show of destructive mania, would pass harmlessly in a roaring rush; or some fleeting eye, crimson with anger, would be raised and over-hauled and swept astern, metamorphosed into headlights of blank glare rocking in feebly furious emulation of that headlong pace.

The buffeting air grew cooler and yet more cold; but neither the man nor the woman minded. His love warm in his arms, Lanyard was trying to live for the moment only, to be oblivious of yesterday and reckless of tomorrow. He failed, of course: impossible for one who loved so well to be deaf to the murmurings of his heart against that resolution which, shaped by his soberest judgment, firmed by his will, bade him put love away tonight forevermore, lest harm befall her in whom love had its source and whole existence. This evening together must be the last: so he was fixed in his intention. But how tell Eve, how make her understand, win her consent and concurrence? . . .

"Why do you look behind so often, Michael?"

"A bad old habit," Lanyard lightly lied, cursing his stupidity for having let her remark that symptom of a mind perturbed—"a souvenir of bad old days. Jungle folk, they say, never are wholly reclaimed from jungle ways; the instincts of the chase are always cropping up in our least considered action, we are forever conceiving ourselves, as of old, hunter, and hunted in the same skin."

"My poor Michael!" The woman indulgently laughed. "Does he imagine he is deceiving somebody?"

"But do you not forget"—he snatched at this straw—"that there are motor-cycle police abroad, even on these back-country roads? Naturally one keeps an eye out for them . . ."

For all that Eve had again contrived to put him out of countenance, there had been colour of truth in his equivocation that had failed: Lanyard's restless vigilance was more instinctive than excited by any indication either that the car was being trailed or that the riddle of his whereabouts was one of any present interest to those whose malevolence he had sound reason to beware of. Since the previous night nothing had happened to show that Morphew had succeeded in having the devious way traced which Lanyard had taken en route from Folly's residence to his own lodgings and then on to the modest hotel which ultimately had provided him with a bed, or to contradict the inference that Morphew had decided to profit by his lesson in humility and count it cheap at its cost. . . . Than which last Lanyard could not readily imagine any hope more infatuate: Life had taught him too well to know the temper of the Morphew breed.

It was true, however, that he had been at some pains all day to keep himself rather thoroughly insulated against news from Morphew's side. The story of the recovered emeralds had "broken" too late for the morning papers; and although Crane beyond much doubt could have supplied helpful information, Lanyard had been studious to remain lost to that one, too, entertaining as he did not the remotest wish to be haled into court as a witness against Mallison.

Not that conscience reproached for the ruse which had brought about the arrest of the dancing man as the thief of night before last. Even though Mallison might in point of simple fact be innocent of that crime, the severest sentence to which he was liable, if convicted, would be mild punishment for the part he had played in the conspiracy to blackmail Folly McFee; Lanyard cheerfully would have lied the man into a life term in requital for that alone, and with as much confidence would have looked to find the perjury recorded to his credit in the Judgment Book on the Day of the Last Accounting.

But if by any chance Mallison should manage to set up a convincing alibi, or even to leave his guilt or innocence an open question in Lanyard's mind, the doubt would find fresh force that would not down, new plausibility would clothe the fear that the Lone Wolf might have usurped dominion over the body and soul from which the mind of Michael Lanyard temporarily had been dispossessed, long enough to commit them anew to ancient ways of knavery.

In this respect at least Lanyard was constrained to own himself a moral coward: he shrank from any test that might result in proving him, though all unwittingly, apostate to the regeneration upon which Eve's faith in him was established; he held it torture intolerable to think that he might, in the last assay, be found wanting in the one condition that gave him a shadow of claim upon her consideration.

And with these thoughts a memory of later garnering lurked in the background of his reverie, a presence terrible and importunate . . . like a shape of horror stalking at the shoulder of one who treads the echoing emptiness of a house called haunted . . .

Opportunely that spectre was for the time being banished by Eve's announcement: "We are nearly there."

Its pace growing momentarily more moderate, the car approached the mouth of a by-way where a roadside sign seared the night with letters of fire: INN OF THE GREEN WOODS. Wheeling headlights raked aisles of pines through which the road serpentined at a sharp grade upward, leading the brougham out at last into a hilltop clearing where a rambling structure sat, of undressed logs, with deep verandas and windows of ingratiating warmth. To one side a few cars of earlier arrivals were parked. Indoors an atmosphere neither too rude nor too sybaritic made good Eve's recommendation, a discriminating taste had imposed the refinements of today upon yesterday's primitive accommodations. A great fireplace of field-stone nursed a blaze of logs grateful to flesh nipped by the night air. Tables dressed in good taste and not closely ranked gained an additional effect of privacy through low fences of rustic work setting them apart. Of these a number were in use when Eve de Montalais and Lanyard were conducted to one which waited in a corner, ready laid for them.

Not long after, still another party turned up and was assigned a nearby table. Lanyard accorded its four members the same shrewd but covert study which he had already wasted on their predecessors, perceiving in these newcomers, as well, nothing to re-excite a disposition to distrust mankind in toto which was yielding rapidly to the blandishments of that delightful and devoted presence at his elbow, a dinner most admirable of its kind, and a wine finer than any a discriminating palate had relished in many a moon; influences so powerful as to compensate even his forebodings of the reckoning to come. Some acquaintance with the ways of road-houses like this, broad-minded enough to produce a bottle of sound Burgundy without so much as a gesture of deference to the law of the land, lent strength to the apprehension that, when Lanyard had settled his score, he would bear away from the Inn of the Green Woods a purse as thin as his expectation of a dull old age. And never a hope of being able to replenish it before the next quarterly remittance day, two months away!

A thought to drive a man in love distracted who had no other worries tearing at his heart. With all his might Lanyard tried to put it out of mind lest it shadow his mood too evidently to be misread. Eve must never be permitted to suspect that pride of penury had anything to do with his decision to make an end tonight of relations which, however heartrending the wrench that must sever them, love worthy of its inspiration might no longer sanction.

Either the wine or his anxiety to seem at ease loosened his tongue and enlivened his wit, Lanyard found himself talking with a humour and a verve that enabled him to ride cavalierly over awareness of the look in the eyes so constant to his, a look in which perplexity and patience too constantly found place. But all the while he was half-consciously preparing for the challenge which came when, with the room to themselves but for one other party of diners, they lingered over coffee and cigarettes before the fire.

"When are you going to tell me, Michael, what is on your mind?"

Words quietly spoken, like drops of cool water added one by one to the seething contents of a test tube, precipitating the elements of the situation between them. And he who had no small conceit in the readiness with which he was wont to deal with others, experienced now a moment of mental flurry, lost the thread of his argument, and stared helplessly into those smiling but intent eyes. She was finished, he had to recognize, with forbearance; nevertheless he could not but make one last attempt to stave off the inevitable.

"What should there be, Eve, more than you know?"

"Do you really want me to believe you have forgotten our talk, the other night at the Ritz, the discussion you yourself started and that, at my request, we didn't finish?"

"Must we recall that now?"

"It isn't like you, Michael, to palter . . . We aren't children any more, my dear; you know my mind and I know yours—at least in part. I love you and want you for my husband; but you won't ask me to marry you, of your own volition you have raised up the ghost of your dead yesterday to stand between us and"—she had a smile for the verbal extravagance—"forbid the banns! But I have refused to be frightened by bogeys. With that we left the question open, night before last; since when something has happened." She nodded gravely: "Tell me, Michael . . ."

"What makes you think—?"

"You love me too well to distress me needlessly by leaving a matter so vital in suspense. If nothing had occurred to make you hesitate, for fear of giving me pain, you wouldn't be trying so hard to talk about everything imaginable but the one thing that counts."

He gave his head a tormented shake. "Is it not enough that, the more I weigh the circumstances, the more sure I feel I am right?—the only way to be fair to you is to take myself out of your life."

"But it seems to me I am the one to say what is fair or unfair to me. After all, my happiness is at stake."

"Not more than mine."

"Much more than yours. You are selfish, Michael—not meaning to be, but because you would hurt me to my very heart to spare yourself self-reproach, if ever after our marriage anything should come out of the past to trouble us. As if anything matters to a woman who loves, so long as she is well loved in return!"

"You show me to myself in an unkind light . . ."

"I am using every weapon I can find in my fight with life for the right to be happy."

"I would break my own heart rather than cause you an instant's unhappiness . . ."

"You think so, dear. But you at least would have the memory of an act of renunciation to console you—you could say to yourself: 'I suffer, but for her sake.' For me there would be only the knowledge that I had been cheated out of my due. I have the right to claim more of life than it has given me . . ."

The voice of melancholy music faltered, then resumed: "The War took my husband from me before I was old enough to know what love could mean. Now, long after, I have found a greater love—and I am required to give it up solely because you are afraid somebody may some day tell me what I already knew, that once upon a time you were a little lower than the angels!"

To avoid the accusation of her look, Lanyard stared blindly into the fire.

"I am not good enough for such a love as yours, Eve."

"Perhaps no one of us is good enough for Love. Yet we can try to be, by serving . . ."

Lanyard hung his head; and in accents of quiet conviction Eve de Montalais pursued: "Something has happened. I thought so, from your manner this afternoon, now I am sure. It isn't that you have ceased to care for me—"

"You know it is not that."

"What, then? It must be something quite as serious, you couldn't hold out against me as you do if it were anything less. Michael: you can't refuse to tell me now."

He made a sign of submission combined with a plea for time in which to assort his thoughts. Indisputably nothing less than the truth would satisfy her; but it might be that something less than the whole truth, so sure to terrify the woman, would serve.

And while he sat turning the matter over in his mind, their waiter approached.

"Monsieur Paul Martin?" the man enquired, with an execrable attempt to give the words a French inflexion.

In his abstraction, Lanyard signified an impatient negative, but Eve de Montalais was less thick-witted.

"What name?" she quickly enquired.

"Paul Martin, ma'm. He's wanted on the telephone—a long distance call."

"From New York?"

"I don't know, ma'm, the party didn't say, just asked for Monsieur Paul Martin—party with a sort of a foreign accent, French, I guess."

Eve looked sharply to Lanyard: "It is for you—you must answer it." He responded with a puzzled nod, though his memory needed no more jogging. But was it possible? he wondered, letting the waiter lead to the telephone booth in the office of the inn; aside from Eve and himself, that alias of a day long past was known to but three people in the world; and of these one was in London and one at last accounts in Paris, the third alone was in New York . . .

But if Liane knew where he was dining, so far away from Town, she must have been informed by somebody who had followed him without his knowledge!

Not the voice of Liane, but a man's saluted him above the humming of the long distance wire, a man's voice with, as the waiter had indicated, a strong tinge of nasal French.

"Monsieur Paul Martin?"

"Yes. Who wants him?"

"I am spikin' for 'is sister. Ees this Monsieur Martin spikin'?"

It was Liane who for her own ends had nominated herself the sister of Monsieur Paul Martin, one day in Paris long ago.

Lanyard answered "Yes."

"Pardon, monsieur: your sister ees too beesy now to telephone you 'erself. She have ask' me to geev you a message."

"Monsieur is most amiable," Lanyard replied in French. "What is the message, please?"

"Prenez garde."

"What do you say?"

"Bon soir, monsieur."

"Hello! hello!"

But Lanyard worried the hook in vain: the other had hung up, the wire was closed. . . .

Prenez garde—take care!

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