“And he did save me--he and you!” She spoke in a lower voice, and he could see a misty trouble in her eyes. “Will you forgive me for what I said that night?” she pleaded, softly. “It was so very, very cruel! It must have cut you to the heart to have me say such a thing to you, and at a moment, too, when you were generously risking, perhaps, your life to help me.” “It _did_ hurt,” replied he. “It would be foolish for me to deny it. But, then, I realized what your convictions must necessarily be. And so,” smiling, “that eased it, you see.” “At any rate, I realized, afterwards, what you had done for me, and so began to doubt that you were to be classed among my enemies. When I opened the packet of securities that night, after snatching them from you in front of the safe, I found some letters with your name signed to them.” “Ah, yes,” said Kenyon with interest. “So you saw them, too?” “There was something about them, I don’t know what, that caused me to distrust them. That night when you came to the Club, in Mulberry Street, a way of convincing myself as to this suddenly occurred to me.” “You asked me to write my name in a book,” said Kenyon, quietly. “I remember wondering about that at the time. I was quite confident though that you had a secret motive.” “The writing was not the same!” she cried, in triumph. “It was nothing at all like that of the letters. And so,” with a laugh, “I was then sure that--that you had not written them--that someone had used your name, that you had spoken the truth that night in the cab when you denied all knowledge of the Austin affair.” “Clever!” commented Kenyon. He watched the play of the lights in her brilliant face. When she smiled, her teeth seemed perfection; and her eyes fairly set him dreaming. “I was pleased,” she said. “Indeed, I was quite delighted. And yet I was frightened. I could not altogether--” She hesitated painfully, now; so Kenyon finished the sentence for her. “You could not altogether trust me,” said he, good-naturedly. “But that was only natural. One seldom trusts, at the outset, persons whom one has suspected of affiliation with the enemy. It’s a sort of military instinct. Perhaps you get it from an ancestor, who may have been a soldier.” She laughed at this. “And you must have thought me a most unaccountable person, all along!” she cried. “Even to the very end I no doubt seemed a sort of fay, appearing so strangely, as I did. Take the incident of a few nights ago at the old house outside South Norwalk, for example.” “I was astonished when you darted out so suddenly. But I had an intimation that some unlooked-for person was on the ground, before us. One of Forrester’s men saw, or heard, you in the road.” “I heard his signal,” said Dallas, “and oh, I was so frightened. But I hid myself and did not answer; later I stole away up the road.” “But why did you walk all that distance; it was a good five miles.”