He had passed through the front door of the flat, and Pixie stood within the threshold, her hand clasping the handle of the door, her face, tired and strained, raised to his own. "He didn't!" she cried quickly. "Oh, he didn't. It wasn't Pat who spoke--it was the pain, the pain, and the tiredness and the disappointment. They force out the words. Haven't you found that yourself? But his heart doesn't mean them. He's all raw and hurting, and I worried him. ... I shouldn't have done it! You must be angry with me, not with Pat." Stephen gave her a long, strange look. "I think I--" he began, and stopped short suddenly. "What?" queried Pixie, and there was a long pause. "I--don't know!" he answered dreamily then, and without a word of farewell turned away and descended the steps. But he did know. In the moment in which he had stood facing her while she pled her brother's cause, the secret of his own heart was revealed. Never under any circumstances could he be angry with Pixie O'Shaughnessy. He loved her; she was for him the one woman in the world; with all the stored-up love of his empty life he loved her, and longed for her for his own. That was the reason of his happiness during the past days, of the extraordinary new zest and interest in life which had filled his mind; of his content in Pixie's contentment, his anxiety for her anxiety, his furious resentment when she was abused. And he loved her. He loved her when she lapsed into her Irish brogue, and said "Me dear"; he loved her when she assumed Frenchified airs, struck attitudes, and cried "_Ma foi_!" he loved her when she was sad, when she was glad, when she was youthful and mischievous, when she was serious and old, when she walked beside him in the street in the hat with the curling feather, when she sat on the hearthrug in her rose-hued dress crooning songs in her soft, sweet voice. Always, and always, he loved her; she had crept into his heart like a ray of sunshine lighting up unused rooms; she had melted his coldness, as the south wind melts the frost. He loved Pixie, and Pixie was going to marry Stanor Vaughan... Stephen Glynn stepped shuddering into the clammy street, and away up on the fifth floor landing Pixie still stood motionless, holding the handle of that open door, repeating to herself dreamily that he would come back, he must come back! He had never said good-bye! CHAPTER TWENTY THREE. COMPLICATIONS. On the following afternoon Stephen Glynn failed to pay his daily visit to the flat. After the revelation of the night before he had neither the strength nor the courage to encounter Pixie anew. Little use to shut the stable door after the steed had flown, but he must at least have time to think, to face the future, and decide upon his own course. And then at seven o'clock came the ring of the telephone, and Pixie's voice speaking piteously in his ear--