“Jim,” said the woman, in lower tones, sobering again, “there’s trouble ahead, already!” She drew her chair a little closer, and leaned forward, with her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands. Durkin lighted another cigar, and lounged toward her with the same careless pose, his face alert with new and different interest. “MacNutt?” “No, not him, thank heaven!” “You don’t mean Doogan’s men?” “Not so loud, dear! No, not Doogan’s men, either. It’s nothing like that. But tell me, quickly, has anything gone wrong over here?” “Not a thing—except that you were away!” “But hasn’t _anything_ happened since I saw you?” “Nothing worth while—no. It’s been so dull, so deadly dull, I all but jumped back into the old game and held up a Charleston pool-room or two! Five whole weeks of—of just waiting for you!” She caught up her veil, where a part of it dropped down from her hat-rim, and smiled her wistfully girlish smile at him. Then she glanced carefully about her; no one seemed within earshot. “Yes, I know. It seemed just as long to me, dearest. Only, because of several things, _I_ had to jump into something. That’s what I must tell you about—but we can’t talk here.” “Then we’ll have William call a taxi?” She nodded her assent. “We can talk there without having some one hanging over our shoulders.” “Do you know,” she went on, as she watched the waiter push out through the crowded, many-odored room, “I often think I must have lived through the ordinary feelings of life. I mean that we have already taken such chances together, you and I, that now only a big thing can stir me into interest. I suppose we’ve exhausted all the every-day sensations.” “Yes, I know the feeling,” said Durkin, through his cigar-smoke. “I suppose it’s really a sort of drunkenness with us now. I couldn’t go back to the other things, any more than I could go back to—to stogies. All this last four weeks of hanging about I have felt like—oh, like a sailor who has pounded round every strange sea in the world, and has come home to be told not to go out of his own back yard.”