"You hadn't spoken of leaving us before." The regret in Tollman's voice was sincere, because it was the regret of a trapper who sees game slipping away from the snare, and it made him perhaps a shade over insistent. "Do you really regard it as so important?" For just an instant a gleam of anger showed in the visitor's eyes under this questioning, and his glance, leveled straight at his host, was that of a man who would prefer open combat to veiled hostility. "Not only important," he corrected, "but vital." "Of course, in that event," murmured Mr. Tollman, "there is nothing more to say." But an hour later as Conscience and Farquaharson sat on the terrace, somewhat silent and constrained, Eben joined them with a deeply troubled face. "I've just come from the telephone," he announced with the air of a man in quandary. "It was an imperative call from Boston--and it puts me in a most awkward position." Farquaharson, sitting with the drawn brow of preoccupation, simulated for his host's assertion no interest and offered no response, but Conscience asked, "What is it, Eben?" "It's a business matter but one that involves a duty to my associates. I don't see how I can ignore it or decline to go." "But why shouldn't you go?" inquired his wife, and immediately Eben replied. "Ordinarily I should, but Stuart says he must leave for New York to-day and there are no servants on the place. You can't stay here absolutely alone." "I shall be all right," she declared, but her husband raised his hands in a gesture of reasonable protest. "I couldn't think of it," he insisted. "Why, it's a half-mile to the nearest house. It wouldn't do." Then with an urgency of manner he turned to Farquaharson. "Stuart, I dislike greatly to ask you to change your plans--but you realize the situation. Can't you put off leaving until to-morrow?" The younger man turned slowly and his gaze was disconcertingly piercing, as he asked, "Don't you regard that as a somewhat unconventional suggestion--leaving Conscience here with no one but me? What of Dame Grundy?" Eben only laughed and arched his brows in amusement. "Why, my dear boy, you're a member of the family, aren't you? Such a question is the height of absurdity." "Your faith is touching," retorted the visitor dryly, then he added: "I'm sorry, but I must go this afternoon." Before him rose the true proportions of the ordeal to which his host so casually invited him, and from facing them he flinched with the honesty of genuine apprehension. After last night each hour spent here meant trusting under fire a resolution attained only in a moment of something like exaltation. Such an experiment seemed the rashness of sheer irresponsibility, and to underestimate its danger was only recklessness. Then he saw Conscience's eyes fixed musingly upon him and in them brooded a confidence which he could not analyze or comprehend.