He emerged from the shadows. "I didn't dare to hope I should see you. I ran away from the yacht club dance--and I'm due back there now. But I wanted you. I think I must have wished so hard that I wished you here. I wouldn't ring for fear I should wake poor Miss Matthews." His eager whisper met no like response. "You shouldn't have come," she said, dully. He bent down to look at her. Under the light from the street lamp he could see the disorder of her fair hair, the frightened look in her eyes. "Dear one--what is it?" "You mustn't call me that. Did you get my letter?" "Yes. That's why I came--I knew that by this time you would have written to Anthony--that you were--free----" "But I haven't written to Anthony." "You haven't? Wasn't that the letter you just mailed?" "No--I was mailing a letter to you----" A sudden fear clutched him. "What did you have to say to me?" "That--oh, Justin, I can't give Anthony up----" "Why not?" "Oh----We can't talk here. Come up-stairs quietly--we mustn't disturb Letty." She glided ahead of him, and when he came into the shadowy room she was standing by the cabinet. "I've something to show you," she said, and opened the carved box and held it out to him. "It's my father's ring," she said; "he broke my mother's heart--and I won't break Anthony's." Then, in halting sentences, she told him how that day she had come upon the ring. She told him her mother's history. And he listened, and insisted at last, tenderly, that she had made mountains out of mole-hills. But he found her obstinate. "I must not break my promise," she insisted. "Happiness could never come to us." And, white and wistful in the face of his flaming arguments, she held to her determination until he left her. He had turned away wrathfully, and had reached the top of the winding stairway, when he heard her sobbing. He came back swiftly, and gathered her in his arms. "You're mine," he said, holding her close. "You know that, Betty." She drew back from him. "Please," she begged, and so he let her go, and made his way blindly out of the room. Miss Matthews sleeping feverishly, became aware above the sighing of the wind of an intermittent sound of woe. She sat up and listened, put one foot out of bed, then the other, and throwing on her old gray wrapper, wavered toward the threshold of the door between the two rooms. By the flickering light of the candle which burned on Bettina's desk she could see the little shaking white figure on the floor. "Betty child," she said in a hoarse whisper, "dear child--what's the matter?" "Oh," Bettina sat up and pushed her hair back from her tear-wet face, "oh, I've waked you up. I think I just forgot that there was any one in the whole wide world except myself----" The expression on her tragic face told keen Miss Matthews that there was some deep trouble which needed help.