Richard sat there with serious face watching the man at the bar whom the boy had pointed out, until he and his heavy companion went out; then Dick fell into deep thought. A wild, improbable suspicion had come to his mind, so improbable, so wild, that he felt ashamed to dwell on it. The likeness was familiar; so unlike, and yet so strangely like, that Dick hardly knew what to believe. “Poor devil! Why should I allow a chance resemblance to make me accuse him of a thing so bad as that. He has enough to bear and answer for now, yet--yet--But it’s too wild, too improbable. I’ll forget it, I’ll dismiss the thought from my mind; the messenger was surely mistaken, and I’ll devote my evening to seeing about Maggie’s sister. Here’s to an evening free from all thoughts of that dead girl. And yet--it’s very strange--I half believe”--Then, shrugging his shoulders, Dick impatiently drained his glass and started for Washington Square. CHAPTER XIV. “GIVE ME UNTIL TO-MORROW.” As Richard was early, he stopped for a moment to see Dido Morgan, and finding her ready to start home, asked her to walk a little way with him down Fifth Avenue. She was looking quite wan when he went in, but she brightened up and flushed with pleasure at the prospect of seeing him for a little time. “I had an offer from a manager to-day to go on the stage,” she said, quietly. “I hope you did not accept it,” Dick replied, quickly, looking at the girl’s downcast face, which seemed strangely altered since last night. “Not yet.” “And you won’t, Dido?” he said, pleadingly. “I don’t see why not, Mr. Treadwell.” Dick started unpleasantly. He had not before noticed that she never called him by any name when addressing him, and now it seemed to suggest that there was a difference between them, and he vainly wondered what it was. “I should be very sorry, Dido, to see you go on the stage. In the first place you don’t know anything about acting, and it would take you years before you could hope to attain any position.” “I FEEL that I can act,” she said deeply. “My nerves seem so tight that I long to get up and act some life. I want to act love, and then hate, and then murder.” “Why, Dido?” Dick asked, coolly and curiously, although he felt the deep emotion underlying her words. He recalled what an old club-man said to him once, that every woman disappointed in love wanted to act, and he half wondered if Dido had been falling in love with some of the handsome men who frequented photograph galleries to have reproduced the being they love most of any on earth, but he put away the thought as a wrong to Dido. “I _feel_ it, I tell you I feel it. I can’t endure a monotonous life any more. I must have some excitement,” she said, passionately.