suspense of waiting till morning. I wanted to save her from something
that I felt intimately, but did not understand, and at which my reason
mocked in vain.

And as I ran I thought I heard the patter of the dog's feet, pacing
mine.

I was rounding the corner of Tenth Street now, and again the folly of
my behaviour struck home to me. I stopped and tried to think. Was it
some instinct that was taking me back, or was it the remembrance of
Jacqueline's beauty? Was it not the desire to see her, to ask her
about the ring?

Surely my fears were but an overwrought imagination and the strangeness
of the situation, acting upon a mind eagerly grasping out after
adventure, being set free from the oppression of those dreadful years
of bondage!

I had actually swung around when I heard the ghostly patter of the feet
again close at my side. I made my decision in that instant, and
hurried swiftly on my course back toward the apartment house.

I was in Tenth Street now. It was half-past two in the morning, and
beginning to grow cold. The thoroughfare was empty. I fled, a tiny
thing, between two rows of high, dark houses.

When at last I found my door my hands were trembling so that I could
hardly fit the key into the lock.

I wondered now whether it had not been the pattering of my heart that I