"An enemy might have written a lie," suggested Mr. Royce. "But Marcia wouldn't have believed it," retorted Curtiss. "I know her--she would have cast it from her. She trusted me. No; whatever the secret, it was one whose truth she could not doubt." And I agreed with him. We shook hands with him, at last; and when the great White Star ship swung out into the stream, he waved us a final good-bye from the deck. "So he's gone," I said, as we rolled back down town again. "Yes--and the question is whether he was wise to go--whether it can do any good." "I think he's wise," I said. "It's a real passion--as you yourself pointed out to me." "A real passion--yes," agreed our junior. "And yet--do you know, Lester, at the bottom of it all, I suspect some hideous, unbelievable thing. It turns me cold sometimes--trying to imagine what the secret is. It's a sort of dim, vague, threatening monster." "Yes; I've felt that way about it. I can't grasp it, and yet I feel that it's there, just below the surface of things, ready to jump out and rend us. Well, Curtiss will find out." "I hope so, if only for his sake. He'll go mad if he doesn't--and so will we, if we talk about it any more. I want you to look over those papers in the Consolidated suit. It comes up this afternoon, you know--and, by Jove! we'll have to hurry, or we'll be late for the hearing." CHAPTER XIV Recalled to the Front Never were slippers and easy-chair more welcome to me than they were that night. I was thoroughly weary in mind as well as body, and as I dropped into the chair and donned the slippers, I determined to go early to bed, and to forget all about the Lawrence enigma. I was heartily glad that I was rid of it; it had proved so baffling, so discouraging that I rejoiced at the chance which had taken it out of my hands. Burr Curtiss must puzzle it out for himself. I fancied I could see him, pacing up and down the deck of the _Oceanic_, staring ahead into the starlit night, bracing himself for that meeting which would mean so much to him. I wondered what Marcia Lawrence's thoughts were. Did she regret that she had fled? Did she already see the fatal error of that step? Ah, if her lover were only beside her, there on the deck, as he might have been but for that cruel irony of fate which had swept her from him! She could not know that he was pursuing her--that he would be the first to meet her as she stepped ashore at Liverpool. How would she bear the shock of that meeting?