Clayton's eyes were now fixed only on his friend Witherspoon, whose steamer was now picking him up at Boulogne. The approach of the Fourth of July, with a triple holiday--Saturday, Sunday and Monday--caused Clayton to toil, early and late, in the vast annual settlements of the end of the fiscal year. It was upon the basis of the settlement of June 30th that the reports of July 1st, the annual election, were to be made. But one thought now filled Clayton's agitated heart. It was Irma Gluyas' future. Her resolute policy of holding him off had inflamed Clayton's lover ardor to an overmastering passion. Gallant and loyal, he had taken her at her own word. The unconventional artist life, her romantic early history, her foreign birth, her carefully veiled coming debut, all this conspired to cover the singular reticence of the diva as to her home life. He never had demanded her whole heart confidence, for he had been forced to veil from her his hopes of winning a fortune by one fell swoop upon the astounded Worthington. "And then," murmured the passionate, heated lover, "I can tell her all. I can give her a home, the power of wealth to set my jewel off, and there shall be nothing hidden between us." From first to last he had concealed nothing from her, save the mechanism of the short, sharp struggle which was to make him almost a millionaire, if Jack Witherspoon's bold plan succeeded. It had been for her sake as well as his own that the veiled star, Irma Gluyas, had laughingly searched the map of New York and vicinity to find places of safe meeting. To avoid Robert Wade's spies, to preserve Irma's incognito, they had exhausted the "lions" of every Long Island, Staten Island, and New Jersey village. They had canvassed every place of resort within fifty miles of New York City. With a dumb fidelity Madame Raffoni had accompanied her beautiful charge. There was a wholesome innocence in these strangely arranged stolen interviews. Clayton often searched that lovely face to read what malign influence kept her from opening her whole life to him. But it all seemed so clear. Her wild artist nature yearned for the honors of a world's applause; it was agreed between them that, be it opera season or concert tour, that, once success was achieved, the eclipse of Love should hide her from the eager moths who flutter around the risen star. "She trusts me; I have not told her all. When I can give her my whole life and a fortune," thought Clayton, "then I shall say, 'Irma, open the sealed books. There must be nothing hidden between us.'" With a serene confidence in Madame Raffoni, Randall Clayton always came home alone and by circuitous routes, artfully varied, from these strange trysts. This stolen time seemed all too short to speak of their future, gilded by a love which thrived strangely in the difficulties besetting the strangely-met couple.