"I thought her an ordinary schoolgirl, and yet every once in a while she makes what you billiard players call a professional shot. What matter? So long as they do not shut the door in my face, I ask nothing more. But do you want my opinion? I feel it in my bones that something will go wrong to-morrow." "Good lord, are you losing your nerve?" cried Braine impatiently. "The secret service has the warning; they find the green stuff, and Jones & Co. will mog off to the police station. And there'll be a week of red tape before they are turned loose again. They'll dig into Hargreave's finances and all that. We'll have all the security in the world to find out if the money is in the house or not. Why worry?" "It's only the way I feel. There is something uncanny in the regularity of that girl's good luck." "Ah, but we're not after her this time; it's the whole family." "The servants too?" "Everybody in the house will be under suspicion." "And can you trust Beggs?" "His life is in the hollow of my hand. You can always trust a man when you hold the rope that's around his neck." Still the frown did not leave Olga's brow. With all her soul she longed to be out of this tangle. It had all looked so easy at the start; yet here they were, weeks later, no further forward than at the beginning, and added to this they had paid much in lives and money. Well, if she would be fool enough to love this man she must abide with the consequences. She wanted him all by herself, out of danger, in a far country. He might tire, but she knew in her heart that she never would. This was her one great passion, and while her mode of living was not as honest as might be, her love was honest enough and unswerving, though it was not gilded by the pleasant fancies of youth. "Of what are you thinking?" he asked when he concluded that the pause had been long enough. "You." "H'm. Complimentary?" "No; just ordinary every-day love." "Ah, Olga, why the deuce must you go and fall in love with a bundle of ashes like myself? Ashes, and bitter ashes, too. Sometimes I regret. But the regretting only seems to make me all the more savage. What opium and dope are to other men, danger and excitement are to me. It is not written that I shall die in bed. I have told you that already. There is no other woman--now. And I do love you after a fashion, as a man loves a comrade. Wait till this dancing bout is over and I may talk otherwise. And now I am going to shake hands and hobnob with the elite--beautiful word! And while I bow and smirk and crack witticisms, I and the devil will be chuckling in our sleeves. But this I'll tell you, while there's a drop of blood in my veins, a breath in my body, I'll stick to this fight if only to prove that I'm not a quitter." He caught her suddenly in his arms, kissed her, ran lightly to the door, and was gone before she could recover from her astonishment.