"That's where you've got to help me. I don't see quite how to do it alone. With your aid it will be wickedly easy for me to--to deceive him, because he trusts me so entirely. Ah well! Now listen to my plan...." Tired of her low seat, she drew up a chair close to Philia. Long they sat into the night, arranging, discussing, even rehearsing what was to be done on the morrow. At length they separated, but slumber was not for Evarne. No sooner had she laid her weary head upon the pillow than there came to her from the distance the steady throb, throb of machinery. "What can that be?" she mused fretfully. "There's no factory about here, and if there were, why should it be working in the middle of the night?" She rose up on her elbow to listen; the sound ceased. Once more she sought repose; the steady, distant beating recommenced. "I couldn't sleep at the best of times through that persistent noise," she sighed. Then she seemed to hear cautious footsteps within her room. For a moment every muscle of her body contracted with terror, and the thud of the distant engines increased in volume tenfold. Starting up, she struck a match. The room was empty. As she lay down once more she realised the meaning of all these strange, inexplicable sounds. Those steps, that dull, steady throbbing, all originated within her own tortured brain. Repeatedly through that night of wakefulness she could have believed she heard movements, even whispers, within the room. She lay on the borderland of slumber, against her will composing endless appeals to Geoff, begging for mercy, for forgiveness, for continued love, going over and over the pleas she might have uttered to Morris but had neglected. "If I could sleep--oh, if I could only sleep!" she cried wearily. But the day broke without her having won oblivion for a single minute. CHAPTER XXXIX EVIL, THAT GOOD MAY COME The morning dawned radiantly clear, and hot to sultriness. Evarne dressed leisurely, and by nine o'clock, far from being at the studio, was still toying with her breakfast. Her magnificent health saved her from looking as exhausted as the sleepless night and the nerve-strain of the last few days would well have justified. Indeed, with a hectic flush upon her cheek, and eyes supernaturally brilliant, any untrained observer would have adjudged her a fit model for the goddess Hygeia herself. "Do try and eat somethin'," persuaded Philia anxiously. "Goodness knows when you last 'ad a decent square meal." "I don't feel that I can, and what's more, I can't stop looking at it any longer," declared the girl as she rose from the table. "Those poor young men will be thinking I'm not coming again." And indeed at the studio everything did seem to be thoroughly disorganised. "Well, we have done a fine lot of work these last few days," remarked Jack disconsolately.