But the man, when he came, did not scare her one hundredth part as much as she scared him, though he jumped at her from the snuggling fur robe of a stranded automobile, and snatched at her arm with an almost bruising intensity. "Oh, Adele," he cried huskily, "I thought you had failed me again." The Woodland Girl threw back her somber hood and stood there all blonde and tousle-haired and astonishing under the electric light. "I'm not your Adele," she explained breathlessly. "I'm just Chloe Curtis. Adele sent me out to tell you that she absolutely couldn't--couldn't come. You yourself would have seen that it was horridly impossible. But you are to go back to the house now with me--to my uncle's old unused library and see Adele yourself for as much as fifteen minutes. No one--oh, I'm sure that no one--could persuade a woman to be brave--on a street corner; but I think that perhaps if you had a chance to see Adele all alone, she would be very--extraordinarily brave." Anger, resentment, confusion, dismay flared like successive explosions in the man's face, and faded again, leaving his flesh utter ash gray. "It was plucky of you to come," he muttered grimly, "but I haven't quite reached the point yet--thank you--where I go sneaking round people's unused rooms to meet any one!" "Is it so very different from sneaking round street corners?" said the Woodland Girl. The man's head lifted proudly. "I don't go 'sneaking' round street corners," he answered simply. "All Outdoors _belongs_ to me! But I won't go secretly to any house that doesn't welcome me." The Woodland Girl began to stamp her foot. "But the house does welcome you," she insisted. "It's my visity-house, and you are to come there as my friend." In her ardor she turned and faced him squarely under the light, and winced to see how well worth facing he was--for the husband of a coward. There was no sleek New York about him, certainly, but rather the merge of all cities and many countries, a little breath of unusualness, a touch of mystery, a trifling suggestion, perhaps, of more dusty roads than smug pavements, twenty-eight or thirty years, surely, of adventurous youth. Impulsively she put out her hand to him. "Oh, please come," she faltered. "I--think you are so nice." With a little laugh that had no amusement in it, nor pleasure, nor expectation, nor any emotion that the Woodland Girl had ever experienced, he stood and stared at her with some sudden impulse. "Does Adele really want me to come?" he asked trenchantly. "Why yes," insisted the Woodland Girl. "It's life or death for you and Adele."