"And now that you're restored to health, you propose in the same
debonair fashion to--well--to resume the search?"

"Of course," said Paul, all the fighting and aristocratic instincts
returning. "Why not?"

There were no tears in his eyes now, and they looked with luminous
fearlessness at Miss Winwood. He drew a chair to the edge of the
bearskin. "Won't you sit down, Miss Winwood?"

She accepted the seat. He sat down too. Before replying she played
with her fan rather roughly--more or less as a man might have
played with it. "What do you think of doing?"

"Journalism," said Paul. He had indeed thought of it.

"Have you any opening?"

"None," he laughed. "But that's the oyster I'm going to open."

Miss Winwood took a cigarette from a silver box near by. Paul sprang
to light it. She inhaled in silence half a dozen puffs. "I'm going
to ask you an outrageous question," she said, at last. "In the first
place, I'm a severely business woman, and in the next I've got an
uncle and a brother with cross-examining instincts, and, though I
loathe them--the instincts, I mean--I can't get away from them.
We're down on the bedrock of things, you and I. Will you tell me,
straight, why you went away to-day to--to"--she hesitated--"to
pawn your watch and chain, instead of waiting till you got to