"No," she denied gravely. "Listen, and you shall judge. Once, only a short time ago, I was brought face to face with one of these terrible compromises. In a single instant, and by no fault of my own, the dreadful shears of fate were thrust into my hands, and conscience--what I have been taught to call the Christian conscience--told me that with them I must snip the thread of a man's life. Are you listening?" His lips were dry and he had to moisten them before he could say: "Yes, go on; I am listening." "The man was a criminal and he was a fugitive from justice. Conscience--_my_ conscience--insisted that it was my plain duty to raise the hue and cry. For a long time I couldn't do it; and then----" He waited until the silence had grown unbearable before he prompted her. "And then?" "And then chance threw us together. A new world was opened to me in those few moments. I had thought that there could be no possible question between simple right and wrong, but almost in his first word the man convinced me that, whatever I might think or the world might say, _his_ conscience had fully and freely acquitted him. And he proved it; proved it so that I can never doubt it as long as I live. He made me do what _my_ conscience had been telling me I ought to do--just as your _Fleming_ makes _Fidelia_ do." "You denounced him?" he said, and he strove desperately to make the saying completely colorless. "Yes." "And he was taken?" "He was; but he made his escape again, almost at once. He is still a free man." Instantly the primitive instinct of self-preservation, the instinct of the hunted fugitive, sprang alert in the listener. "How can you be sure of that?" he asked, and in his own ears his voice sounded like the clang of an alarm bell. Again a silence fell, surcharged, this one, with all the old frightful possibilities. Once more the loathsome fever quickened the pulses of the man at bay, and the curious needle-like prickling of the skin came to signal the return of the homicidal fear-frenzy. The reaction to the normal racked him like the passing of a mortal sickness when his accusing angel said in her most matter-of-fact tone: "I know he is free; I have it on the best possible authority. The detectives who are searching for him have been here to see me--or, at least, one of them has." The hunted one laid hold of the partial reprieve with a mighty grip and drew himself out of the reactionary whirlpool. "To see you? Why should they trouble you?" "On general man-hunting principles, I suppose," was the calm reply. "Since I gave the necessary information once, they seem to think I can give it again. It is very annoying." "It is an outrage!" declared the listener warmly. And afterward, with only the proper friendly emphasis: "I hope it is an annoyance past." His companion leaned forward in her chair and cautiously parted the leafy vine screen. "Look across the street--under those trees at the water's edge: do you see him?"