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She looked up at him wonderingly, “Anything you wish, of course.”

He dropped her hand, ran his fingers once more through the dark thatch that persistently fell over his eyes. “I must have absolute faith in you, little girl,—and you in Oswald Kane.”

“I—I have.”

“That is as it should be. To-morrow, then, at noon.”

He was gone.

In less than twenty minutes, after the manner of such happenings, a miracle had been wrought.

Elizabeth stood dazed an instant. Then she stumbled to the window, flung up the sash and leaned out to drink in the gale-slashed air with deep convulsive breaths.

“Oh God,” she cried, tears streaming down her cheeks, “help me to make good. Help me—help me!”

And so it happened that on a biting day in January, 1917, at the stroke of twelve, Elizabeth Parsons, aged twenty-three, entered the sanctum sanctorum of Oswald Kane, was handed a pen by his business manager and ssss1 forthwith signed away five years of her life with an option on the next five, at the rate of fifty dollars per week for the first two years, one hundred for the third, and one hundred and fifty for each year following.