"Quick, Constance," he shouted over the wire, "leave everything.
They are holding up our check. They have discovered something. Take
a cab and drive slowly around the square. You will find me waiting
for you at the north end."

That night the newspapers were full of the story. There was the
whole thing, exaggerated, distorted, multiplied, until they had
become swindlers of millions instead of thousands. But nevertheless
it was their story. There was only one grain of consolation. It was
in the last paragraph of the news item, and read: "There seems to be
no trace of the man and woman who worked this clever swindle. As if
by a telepathic message they have vanished at just the time when
their whole house of cards collapsed."

They removed every vestige of their work from the apartment.
Everything was destroyed. Constance even began a new water color so
that that might suggest that she had not laid aside her painting.

They had played for a big stake and lost. But the twenty thousand
dollars was something. Now the great problem was to conceal it and
themselves. They had lost, yet if ever before they loved, it was as
nothing to what it was now that they had tasted together the bitter
and the sweet of their mutual crime.

Carlton went down to the office the next day, just as before. The
anxious hours that his wife had previously spent thinking whether he
might betray himself by some slip were comparative safety as
contrasted with the uncertainty of the hours now. But the first day
after the alarm of the discovery passed off all right. Carlton even