Harkness spoke rapidly. "There is no time at all, but I want you to know that I was in the room at the top of the house just now when you were there. I heard everything. I apologise for overhearing. I could not escape, but I want you to know that if there's anything I can do--anything in the world--I will do it. Tell me if there is. We have only a moment." On looking back afterwards he thought it marvellous of her that, realising who was behind them, she scarcely turned her head, showed no emotion, but speaking swiftly, answered: "Yes, I am in great trouble--desperate trouble. I am sure you are kind. There is a thing you can do." "Tell me," he urged. They were now nearly by the door and the two men were coming up. "I have a friend. I told him that if I would agree to his plan I would send a message to him to-night. I did not mean to agree, but now--I'm not brave enough to go on. He is to be at half-past nine at a little hotel--'The Feathered Duck'--on the sea-front. Any one will tell you where it is. His name is Dunbar. He is young, short, you can't mistake him. He will be waiting there. Go to him. Tell him I agree. I'll never forget . . ." Crispin's forehead confronted them. "What do you say to this? Here is a sheltered corner." Dunbar? Dunbar? Where had he heard the name before? They all sat down. PART II: THE DANCE ROUND THE TOWN I Quarter of an hour later he left them, making his excuses, promising to return at half-past ten. He could not have stayed another moment, sitting there quietly in his wicker armchair looking out on the darkening garden, listening to Crispin's pleasure in Peter Breughel, without giving some kind of vent to his excitement. He must get away and be by himself. Because--yes, he knew it, and nothing could alter the vehement pulsating truth of it--he was in love for the first time in his life. As he threaded his way along the garden paths that was at first all that he could see--that he was in love with that child in the shabby frock who was married to that odious creature, that bag-of-bones, who had not opened his mouth the whole evening long--that child terrified out of her life and appealing to him, a stranger, in her despair, to help her. In love with a married woman, he, Charles Percy Harkness? What would his two sisters, nay, what would the whole of Baker, Oregon, say did they know? But, bless you, he was not in love with her like that--no hero of a modern realistic novel he! He had no thought in that first ecstatic glow, of any thought for himself at all--only his eyes were upon her, of how he could help her, how serve her, now--at once--before it was too late. He was deeply touched that she should trust him, but he also realised that at that particular moment she would have trusted anybody. And yet she had waited, watching him through all the first part of that meal, making up her mind--there was some tribute to him at least in that!