“Not until you know all,” he said, and put her gently from him into the great arm-chair, with a look of reverence and self-abnegation she felt she never would forget. “Then, tell me quickly,” she said, a swift fear making her weak from head to foot. She laid her hand across her heart, as if to help steady its beating. He wheeled forward the leather couch opposite her chair, and sat down, his head drooping, his eyes down. He dreaded to begin. She waited for the revelation, her eyes upon his bowed head. Finally he lifted his eyes and saw her look, and a tender light came into his face. “It is a strange story,” he said. “I don’t know what you will think of me after it is told, but I want you to know that, blundering, stupid, even criminal, though you may think me, I would sooner die this minute than cause you one more breath of suffering.” Her eyes lit up with a wonderful light, and the ready tears sprang into them, tears that sparkled through the sunshine of a great joy that illumined her whole face. “Please go on,” she said softly, and added very gently, “I believe you.” But even with those words in his ears the beginning was not easy. Gordon drew a deep breath and launched forth. “I am not the man you think,” he said, and looked at her to see how she would take it. “My name is not George Hayne. My name is Cyril Gordon.” As one might launch an arrow at a beloved victim and long that it may not strike the mark, so he sent his truth home to her understanding, and waited in breathless silence, hoping against hope that this might not turn her against him. “Oh!” she breathed softly, as if some puzzle were solving itself. “Oh!”--this time not altogether in surprise, nor as if the fact were displeasing. She looked at him expectantly for further revelation, and he plunged into his story headlong. “I’m a member of the Secret Service,--headquarters here in Washington,--and day before yesterday I was sent to New York on an important errand. A message of great import written in a private code had been stolen from one of our men. I was sent to get it before they could decipher it. The message involved matters of such tremendous significance that I was ordered to go under an assumed name, and on no account to let anyone know of my mission. My orders were to get the message, and let nothing hinder me in bringing it with all haste to Washington. I went with the full understanding that I might even be called upon to risk my life.” He looked up. The girl sat wide-eyed, with hands clasped together at her throat. He hurried on, not to cause her any needless anxiety.