He nodded his bowed head covered by the hand that gripped his hair: "Yes, I need it--badly." She rose, loosened his clutch on her slender hand, picked up her muff: "I'll be waiting for you downstairs," she said simply. His face expressed sullen defiance as he passed through the waiting-room. Yet he seemed a little taken aback as well as relieved when Miss Erith did not appear among the considerable number of people waiting there for discharged patients. He walked on, buttoning his fur coat with shaky fingers, passed the doorway and stepped out into the falling snow. At the same moment a chauffeur buried in coon-skins moved forward touching his cap: "Miss Erith's car is here, sir; Miss Erith expects you." McKay hesitated, scowling now in his perplexity; passed his quivering hand slowly across his face, then turned, and looked at the waiting car drawn up at the gutter. Behind the frosty window Miss Erith gave him a friendly smile. He walked over to the curb, the chauffeur opened the door, and McKay took off his hat. "Don't ask me," he said in a low voice that trembled slightly like a sick man's. "I DO ask you." "You know what's the matter with me, Miss Erith," he insisted in the same low, unsteady voice. "Please," she said: and laid one small gloved hand lightly on his arm. So he entered the car; the chauffeur drew the robe over them, and stood awaiting orders. "Home," said Miss Erith faintly. If McKay was astonished he did not betray it. Neither said anything more for a while. The man rested an elbow on the sill, his troubled, haggard face on his hand; the girl kept her gaze steadily in front of her with a partly resolute, partly scared expression. The car went up Park Avenue and then turned westward. When it stopped the girl said: "You will give me a few moments in my library with you, won't you?" The visage he turned to her was one of physical anguish. They sat confronting each other in silence for an instant; then he rose with a visible effort and descended, and she followed. "Be at the garage at two, Wayland," she said, and ascended the snowy stoop beside McKay. The butler admitted them. "Luncheon for two," she said, and mounted the stairs without pausing. McKay remained in the hall until he had been separated from hat and coat; then he slowly ascended the stairway. She was waiting on the landing and she took him directly into the library where a wood fire was burning. "Just a moment," she said, "to make myself as--as persuasive as I can." "You are perfectly equipped, Miss Erith--" "Oh, no, I must do better than I have done. This is the great moment of our careers, Mr. McKay." Her smile, brightly forced, left his grim features unresponsive. The undertone in her voice warned him of her determination to have her way.