"Well?" snapped Barry, recovering his composure. "Where is she? Quick! What have you done with her?" The stranger smiled. "One flight up, on your right," he drawled nonchalantly. "You can’t miss it. The door’s unlocked." For a second Lawrence stared at him dazedly. With every nerve keyed to its highest tension, expecting, and ready to use force, and with visions of having to break down doors and overcome all sorts of obstacles to reach the girl he was seeking, the utter indifference and casual politeness were staggering. He scowled fiercely at the urbane stranger for an instant, the color rising to his face; then, whirling about, raced up the stairs without a word. The upper hall was almost pitch dark, but he thrust out both hands and felt the panels of a door on his right. A second later his fingers closed over a knob, he pushed forward, then stopped still on the threshold, blinking in the bright light, with the echoes of a faint, suppressed cry of a woman ringing in his ears. The room was long and spacious, that effect being heightened by several full-length mirrors, with massive, old-fashioned frames of black walnut, set into the walls at different points. The furniture was mostly of that same mid-Victorian period, ponderous, ugly, and uncomfortable, with a good deal of fringe and furbelows and gimcrack ornament. It was only in contrast to the hall that the place seemed brightly lighted. In reality, the only source of illumination was a nickel lamp with a dark-green china shade, which stood on a marble table at the farther end. Most of this Barry perceived in that curious, instinctive, intuitive manner with which one observes a thing without really looking at it. His whole mind was taken up with the girl who had started from her chair and was staring at him, a half-frightened, half-puzzled, wholly incomprehensible expression on her lovely face. "Shirley!" he cried, springing forward impulsively. "You’re all right? They haven’t—hurt you in any way?" To his amazement, she did not show the slightest sign of being glad to see him. On the contrary, she seemed almost frightened; and the quick backward step she took to place the table between them, no less than the look in her dark eyes, halted Lawrence in his tracks as effectually as a bullet might have done. For a second he stood there staring at her, the color swiftly ebbing from his face. "I don’t—understand," he said at length, in a low, bewildered tone. "What is the matter? It isn’t possible that you’re—afraid of me?" She moistened her lips and, putting out one hand, let the tips of her gloved fingers rest lightly on the table top. From the moment of his entrance her eyes had never left Barry’s face, and now, as he saw them clearly in the lamplight, the look there was like the stab of a knife. "I don’t know," she said quietly; and Lawrence saw that it was the calmness of deliberate effort. "I don’t think it’s quite—that."