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After Leslie had gone, for some moments Wilkinson, in silence, puffed away at his black cigar. Then, with considerable deliberation, he rose, went over to the door, and locked and bolted it. Absorbed in his thoughts, he remained standing there for a long time. When he turned back toward the desk, a woman stood there, facing him—a woman, young, tall, slender, with very dark hair and dark blue eyes, a woman with a strange mixture of hope and trouble in her eyes.

Wilkinson's face paled; he was angry through and through. Nevertheless he struggled to appear calm.

"Confound it, Madeline," he said tactfully, "I forgot all about you. This blamed excitement put it all out of my head." But in the next breath his manner changed, and he burst out with: "What the deuce is your car doing at my door?"

"Your car, not mine," she reminded him gently.

He shrugged his shoulders.

"It happens to be yours," he corrected, "for I gave it to you, didn't I?"

"We won't go into that," wearily she replied.

Wilkinson looked her sternly in the eye.