"Yes," she answered, with a little shudder of recollection. "For weeks
afterward I used to wake up in the middle of the night thinking of it
and going cold all over. He said, 'You have come down into Hell and
lifted me out. Under God, you shall lift me into Heaven as well!'"

"And perhaps you shall," said Cleek, stopping short and uncovering his
head. "At any rate, I'll not attempt to win it by fraud. Miss Lorne, I
am that man. I am the 'Vanishing Cracksman' of those other days. I've
walked the 'straight path' since the moment I kissed your hand."

She said nothing, made no faintest sound. She couldn't--all the
strength, all the power to do anything but simply stand and look at him
had gone out of her. But even so, she was conscious--dimly but yet
conscious--of a feeling of relief that they had come at last close to
the end of the heath, that there was the faint glow of lights dimly
observable through the enfolding mist, and that there was the rumble of
wheels, the pulse of life, the law-guarded paths of the city's streets
beyond.




CHAPTER III


She could not herself have been more conscious of that feeling of relief
than he was of its coming. It spoke to him in the swift glance she gave
toward those distant, fog-blurred lights, in the white, drained face of
her, in the shrinking backward movement of her body when he spoke again;
and something within him voiced "the exceeding bitter cry."