The end of the street, and no pursuing steps, nor shouts of accusing voices!

Once round the corner, Loveland breathed more freely; but with the white glint of his uncovered evening shirt, he was a marked man among men whose overcoats acknowledged winter, and his one anxiety for the moment was to get on as far as possible in as short a time as possible.

He had two or three small pieces of American money in his pocket, rather more than equal to the value of an English shilling, and he thought of hurling himself into a tearing electric car, or rushing up the steps of an "L" station to board the first train that should come in. But he did not know what destination to name, and feared that, if he professed indifference as to the end of the journey, he might arouse suspicion. It was wiser, he decided, to go on foot, dodging from the brilliantly lighted avenues into the darker cross-streets, and so on, indefinitely, until it seemed safe to call a halt.

Before the unexpected climax of his interview with Mr. Milton Loveland had still hoped for ultimate shelter and dinner, but now he ceased to regard either as a likely goal of his adventure. The great thing was, not to be caught by the New York police, and "run in" for assault, clapped into prison, into print, and forever out of the matrimonial court. The present was very bad, but there was hope for the future, although Milton's hints and strange manner had brought closer the cloud of dark presentiment until it pressed like a thick veil over Loveland's eyes.

When he found himself in the Plaza, and saw the black forest of the park billowing away into distance like the gulf of night, he looked towards it as a refuge. If only it were still open at this hour! If only he could get in!

His doubt died at birth; for a big motor car whizzed by him and into the velvet gloom. Evidently Central Park was not shut to the public at night.

Loveland followed the car; and though moving ghostlike along a tree-walled road, he had not quite the wished-for sense of being blotted out by darkness, it was good to escape from glaring lights and staring people.

When Loveland became accustomed to the gloom, it took on colour to his eyes, and turned from black to a deep, transparent blue which shimmered round him like the shadows of spirit forms; and far away where flared the lights of the "Great White Way" the dusk was beaten into sparks of flame as if a dying torch had been shaken down the sky. The blazing eyes of motor lamps, and yellow-winking carriage-lights moved along the dim drives, and drew the night in after them like a folding curtain.

Val turned out of a broad thoroughfare of the park into a quieter road to avoid the procession of vehicles and the faces that peered from their windows. There were no faces in the world that he wanted to see now, save his mother's—and Lesley Dearmer's, and he was ashamed of the longing which ached in him for those two.

"Buck up, you blighter," he admonished himself. "Don't be an ass or a baby."

It was easy to lash his soul with sage advice. But he felt very small and pitiful in the vast, unfriendly city, where it seemed that there were warm overcoats and good dinners for everybody except the Marquis of Loveland.

He strayed aimlessly along a winding way haunted by a melancholy fragrance of dying leaves, and a silence that rustled with scurrying thoughts which could never embody themselves in words.

In the great illuminated caÑons of the New York streets electricity outshone the stars, and it was hard to tell whether the moon lived or died. But above the Park hung a sky like a bell, purple in its dome, and touched with metallic gleams at the rim where the earth-lights climbed. And bye and bye that purple paled slowly with the moon-dawn that sifted down in silver dust over the black trees, whitening the autumn mists that clung close to the grass like a face-cloth on the dead.

Loveland was bitterly cold now—cold all the way through to his heart—but he flung himself down on a bench under a low-branching tree, and wondered desolately if he had found his quarters for the night.

For a moment he had sat there, trying to marshal the routed army of his thoughts, before he realised that he was not alone on the seat. Something stirred at the far end where the shadow was deepest. There was a faint tinkle as of a fairy bell—a cracked fairy bell, and a tiny shape leaped from the bench. Loveland watched it flitting here and there, darting across the glimmering grey road, and then about to prick daintily back again when a motor swung round the curving corner.

The fragile sound of the bell was drowned, and the little shape would have gone under the fat-tyred wheels, to be swept into nothingness like chaff by the wind, had not Val sprung forward, and dashed across the road in front of the car, catching up the morsel in his rush.

He risked his life, but the lights of the car had shown him in one blinding flash that the frisking thing was a miniature black dog, no bigger than his hand; and Val loved dogs big and little with all that was best and warmest in him. Nothing could have tempted him to hurt a dog, or indeed any animal save those it was the legitimate sport of Englishmen to kill; and he could imagine himself murdering a man guilty of cruelty to any helpless creature.

The motor horn gave a shriek, and there was a grinding of brakes, jammed on with savage suddenness, but the car could not have stopped in time. It was only Loveland's quickness which saved him, and scarcely beyond touch of the tyres he stumbled, drawing up his knees to keep from being run over; but he had the tiny, beating body in his hand, held up out of harm's way.

"You fool! You'd have had yourself to thank if you'd been smashed!" growled the chauffeur, who was alone in the car. "And it's God's wonder you didn't make me skid smack into that bench."

Loveland, picking himself up, did not think it worth while to answer, and the chauffeur, who heard the arrival of a policeman unsympathetic to motor men, decided not to stop for further argument. With a parting grumble, he slipped away into the night; and Loveland, by this time on his feet, walked quietly across the road again with the cause of the disturbance quivering in his hand.

"That was a close shave for you, you little beggar," he said half aloud. "Who are you, I wonder, and where did you spring from?"

"Answers to name o' Shakespeare, and dropped out o' my pocket while I snoozed, I guess," said a voice from the shadow. "You bet I'm obliged to you for what you done. 'Twas fine."

Under the big tree that roofed the seat, moon rays dripped between branches like water that trickles slowly through holes in old netting. A man who had been huddled asleep on one corner of the bench was on his feet, holding out eager hands to take the dog from Loveland: a shabby figure even in the dim light, with a hatchet face thin as a new moon, that glimmered pale between the black blot of a frowsy hat and the inky blur of a turned-up coat collar. Val could make out the features but indistinctly, yet he caught the impression of a quaint, patient humourousness, as if a character sketch penned on white paper in three or four sharp black lines had been passed quickly before his eyes.