One last, frantic attempt! But the window catch, rusted with long disuse, stuck. Panting, sick with fear, the girl leaped away and crushed herself into a corner, crouching on the floor behind a heavy box, her dark cloak drawn up to shield her head. And the door opened. A flood of radiance from the relighted student lamp fell athwart the floor. The girl lay close and still, holding her breath. Ten seconds, perhaps, ticked on into Eternity: seconds that were in themselves eternities. Then: "No one here, O'Hagan." The door was closed, and through its panels more faintly came: "Faith, and the murdhering divvle must've flew th' coop afore ye come in, sor." The girl tried to rise, to make again for the window; but it was as though her limbs had turned to water; there was no strength in her; and the blackness swam visibly before her eyes, radiating away in whirling, streaky circles. Even such resolution and strong will as was hers could not prevail against that numbing, deathly exhaustion. Her eyes closed and her head fell back against the wall. It seemed but an instant (though it was in point of fact a full five minutes) ere the sound of a voice again roused her. She looked up, dazzled by a gush of warm light. He stood in the doorway, holding the lamp high above his head, his face pale, grave, and shadowed as he peered down at her. "I have sent O'Hagan away," he said gently. "If you will please to come, now----" IX PROCRASTINATION The cab which picked Maitland up at his lodgings carried him but a few blocks to the club at which he had, the previous evening, entertained his lawyer. Maitland had selected it as the one of all the clubs of which he and Bannerman were members, wherein he was least likely to meet the latter. Neither frequented its sober precincts by habit. Its severe and classical building on a corner of Madison Avenue overlooking the Square, is but the outward presentment of an institution to be a member of which is a duty, but emphatically no great pleasure, to the sons of a New York family of any prominence. But in its management the younger generation holds no suffrage; and is not slow to declare that the Primordial is rightly named, characterizing the individual members of the Board of Governors as antediluvians, prehistoric monsters who have never learned that laughter lends a savor to existence. And so it is that the younger generation, (which is understood to include Maitland and Bannerman), while it religiously pays its dues and has the name of the Primordial engraved upon its cards, shuns those deadly respectable rooms and seeks its comfort elsewhere.