When their palms met they looked into each other's eyes. It was a momentary flash which they exchanged, but in that instant both of them were thrilled with the strange, sweet knowledge that no human soul may analyze: it is the mystic conviction which makes this man or that woman different from all the rest of humankind to the one whose heart is touched. She gave him a smile. “Are you a knight-errant?” She hurried away before he could reply--and, though all his yearning nature strove against his man's resolution to do his duty, it could not prevail: he did not follow her as he wanted to--running after her, crying his love. But duty won out by a mere hazard of a margin because her face, as she had shown it to him at the moment of parting, possessed not merely the wonderful beauty which had so impressed him when he had first seen her--it shone with a sudden flash of emotion that glorified it. He turned away and hurried to the foot of the steps of the Mellicite Club. He had no time to ponder on the nature of that mystery which he had uncovered in the shabby cottage in Rose Alley nor to wonder what sort of persecution it was that could enlist a mother's aid in that grotesque fashion against her own daughter. He had not time even to frame a plan of campaign against the man whom the patient waiters in Union Hall were expecting him to capture. The bell in the tower was booming its nine strokes and the Honorable Archer Converse was coming down the steps from his club, erect, crisp, immaculate, dignified--tapping his cane against the stones. XVIII CORRALING A CONVERT Mr. Converse bestowed only a careless glance at the stranger who was waiting at the foot of the club-house steps. The young man accosted him, not obsequiously, but frankly. “I know you always take a turn in the park at this hour, Mr. Converse. I beg your pardon, but may I walk for a few steps with you?” “Why do you want to walk with me?” “It's a matter--” “I never discuss business on the street, sir. Come to my office to-morrow.” He marched on and Farr went along behind him. “You heard?” demanded the attorney. “I heard.” Farr replied very respectfully, but he kept on. He had rushed away from the girl and had come face to face with Mr. Converse, his mind utterly barren of plan or resource. That interim on which he had counted as a time in which he might devise ways and means had been so crowded with happenings that all consideration of plans in regard to Archer Converse had been swept from his mind. At all events, he had rendered a service in that time; he had made good use of that forty-five minutes--that reflection comforted him even while he dizzily wondered what he was to do now.