Fortunately for both, the dim light masked the expression on Palmer's face, and the girl did not mark the sudden spasm of pain that contracted it. Somewhat hastily, it seemed to her, he stooped and kissed her again. "I'm a brute myself," he said with a faint attempt at humor, "keeping you up till almost midnight. To-morrow night, dear. No, don't come down. Good-night, May, good-night." Once outside the Sinclairs' home, Palmer strode away down the street, for the first time in his life, perhaps, in an agony of self-abasement. Up to now, his fears and worries had been purely selfish ones. He had done something of which he was ashamed, and in which he did not wish to be found out, and in spite of the payment of hush money and solemn protestations of secrecy in return, he had felt that he was treading on the edge of a slumbering volcano. Now, however, May Sinclair's parting words had for once awakened his dormant moral sense, and he flushed hotly at the thought that the kisses he had given the pure girl who believed him all that was true had been but a short twenty-four hours before lavished in a mad burst of passion upon another. With all his faults, Palmer was kind. Horses and dogs were his friends. Small children, oftentimes to his great embarrassment, made much over him. Kind--and weak, he was never cast to play the villain in life's drama; betrayals of friendship, premeditated deception, even injury to the feelings of another, none of these things was natural to him, and his love for May Sinclair, all unknown to him, was working and striving to rouse the finer sense sleeping within him far beneath the crust of ignorance and selfishness and sloth. Thus, in repentant, self-contemptuous mood, he reached the entrance of his big house on the avenue, and in moody silence unlocked the door and entered the quiet hall. At once, to his surprise, a silent figure came forward to meet him, and, peering through the half-light, he recognized the figure of his secretary. "Hullo, Morton," he exclaimed in surprise, "what's the trouble now?" The secretary advanced with an air of caution. "There's a young woman waiting in the reception-room to see you, sir," he said in a low tone. "She's been here since ten o'clock, and she seems to be an uncommonly determined sort of person. In fact, she was too much for me, altogether. I couldn't get rid of her. She insists she's got to see you." Palmer frowned, possibly with well-merited apprehension, for a girl to see him might mean any one of half-a-dozen disagreeable alternatives. With a sigh he drew back the portière and entered, closing the door after him as he did so.