She picked at her supper, but soon set the tray on the center-table and took the easy-chair before the fire. The sense of physical cold was passing off, but the indescribable oppression and apprehension remained. She did not know exactly what she dreaded, but she felt in some vague way that she would be safer sitting thus clad and wakeful before the fire than sleeping in her bed. Once or twice, as the hours passed and her fears strengthened in the silence and mystery of the night, she crept to her door, and opening it, looked up the hall. The square of light was still there, the scent of the cigar pungent on the air. She shut the door softly, each time feeling soothed as by the pressure of a strong, loving hand. Sometime toward the middle of the night the heaviness of sleep came on her, and though she fought against it, feeling that the safety she was struggling to maintain against mysterious menace was only to be preserved by wakefulness, Nature overcame her. Curled in her chair before the crumbling fire, she finally slept--the deep, motionless sleep of physical and mental exhaustion. CHAPTER XXII A NIGHT’S WORK “Have is have, however men may catch.” --SHAKESPEARE. Under cover of the darkness Essex hurried down the street toward where the city passed from a place of homes to a business mart. He had at first no fixed idea of a goal, but after a few moments’ rapid march, realized that habit was taking him in the direction of Bertrand’s. An illumined clock face shining on him over the roofs told him it was some time past his dinner hour. He obeyed his instinct and bent his steps toward the restaurant, throwing the cloak over the fence of a vacant lot and wiping the trickle of blood from his cheek with his handkerchief. He was cool and master of himself once more. His brain was cleared, as a sky by storm, and he knew that to-night’s interview must be one of the last he would have with the woman who had come to stand to him for love, wealth, success and happiness. He must win or lose all within the next few days. Bertrand’s looked invitingly bright after the tempestuous blackness of the streets. Many of the white draped tables were unoccupied. His accustomed eye noted that the lady in the blue silk dress and black hat, and her companion with the bald head and cross-eye, who always sat at the right-hand corner table, were absent. He had fallen into the habit of bowing to them, and had more than once idly wondered what their relations were.