And yet he dared not openly use that weapon; how easy for the old
capitalist to frame a suave excuse for the "maimed rites" of that
Western bridal.

One longing burned now in Clayton's heart, the honest wish to find
some dignified and safe place of meeting with the woman upon whom
he would shower the gold soon to be his own.

"If anything should happen," he thought.

Of course, his own face was too well known to adopt any mere hiding
tactics. Irma was ever fearful of her jealous artist guardians,
and in this lovely evening hour the lover's heart rose up in all
its stormy tendeness to beg her to lift the veil from her incognito.

Even while they murmured again their vows and drifted away into
dreams of the unclouded future, the heavens were blackening around
them.

Irma seemed strangely frightened as she cowered in her lover's
arms, while he begged her to lift the veil of her privacy.

"I must be with you--near you," he cried. "Listen! I have even
now grave matters hanging over me which may summon me suddenly
away from you. You know not my abode. You cannot write or telegraph
safely to my office.

"There are veiled spies, jealous rivals, there, who would rob me
of place, power, and the money which will yet be ours, in the dear
far-off Danube land.