repugnance at the interleaving of yellow cris-crossed sheets.
"She was the one who drowned herself, wasn't she?"

Flamel nodded. "I suppose that little episode adds about fifty
per cent. to their value," he said, meditatively.

Glennard laid the book down. He wondered why he had joined
Flamel. He was in no humor to be amused by the older man's talk,
and a recrudescence of personal misery rose about him like an icy
tide.

"I believe I must take myself off," he said. "I'd forgotten an
engagement."

He turned to go; but almost at the same moment he was conscious of
a duality of intention wherein his apparent wish to leave revealed
itself as a last effort of the will against the overmastering
desire to stay and unbosom himself to Flamel.

The older man, as though divining the conflict, laid a detaining
pressure on his arm.

"Won't the engagement keep? Sit down and try one of these cigars.
I don't often have the luck of seeing you here."

"I'm rather driven just now," said Glennard, vaguely. He found
himself seated again, and Flamel had pushed to his side a low
stand holding a bottle of Apollinaris and a decanter of cognac.

Flamel, thrown back in his capacious arm-chair, surveyed him