Carmel, not struggling now, was carried up a narrow flight of steps; she heard a key turn in a lock. Then she was thrust into a room, pushed so that she stumbled and went to her knees. The door slammed behind her and was locked again.... She got to her feet, trembling, wavering, snatched the cloth from her face, and looked before her.... There, in the dim light, she saw a man. He stood startled, staring with unbelieving eyes. “Evan!...” she cried. “Evan!... Thank God you’re alive.” CHAPTER XXIV He did not come toward her; did not move from his place, and then she saw that he stood only by clinging to the back of a chair.... He leaned forward and stared at her through eyes drawn by pain. “You’re hurt!... They’ve hurt you!” she cried. “My ankle only,” he said. “Sprained, I fancy.” Then, “What are you doing here?” He spoke almost petulantly as one would speak to a naughty child who turns up in some embarrassing spot. “I--I found your letter,” she said. “My letter?... Ah yes, my letter.... Then I--I brought you into this trap.” “No.... Evan, it was a fine thing you did. For me. You--have come to _this_ for me.” “It was an exceedingly unintelligent thing--writing that letter.” “Listen, Evan.... As long as I live I shall be glad you wrote it. I am glad, glad ... to know there is a man capable of--of sacrificing and--maybe dying for----” “Nonsense!” said Evan. “It was a trap, of course. And I thought my mental caliber was rather larger than that of these people. Very humiliating.” He frowned at her. “Why did you have to come?” “You ask that?” “I most certainly do ask it. You had no business to come. Wasn’t my failure to return a sufficient warning?... Why did you take this foolish risk?” “You don’t know?” “I want to know,” he said with the severity of a schoolmaster cross-questioning a refractory pupil. “Must I tell?” “You must.” Carmel was almost able to see the humor of it. A pathetic shadow of a smile lighted her face. “I didn’t want to--to tell it this way,” she said. “I----” “Will you be so good as to give me a direct answer? Why did you come rushing here--headlong--when you knew perfectly well----” He paused and his severe eyes accused her. She moved a step closer; her hands fluttered up from her side and dropped again; she bit her lip. “Because,” she said, in the lowest of voices, “I love you--and--and where you were I--wanted to be.” The chair which supported Evan tipped forward and clattered again into place. He stared at her as if she were some very strange laboratory specimen indeed, and then said in his most insistently didactic voice, punctuating his words with a waggling forefinger, “You don’t mean to stand there--and to tell _me_--that you love _me_!” Carmel gave a little laugh. “Don’t you want me to?” “That,” he said, “is beside the question.... You ... _you_ ... love _me_?” She nodded.