"My darling, my darling, don't make it any harder for me. You never wanted anything in your life as much as I want to take your hand and call you mine before the eyes of the whole world. But it's impossible--you yourself were the first to say so. We don't want a family row, a scandal, all in the papers. Love mustn't be dragged through that sort of ignominy." She thought so, too; she always agreed with him when he talked of love. But he had to come down to earth and the Barlows, finding it necessary to instruct her even in such small matters as how she was to get the letter from them. She was simply to tell Lorry such a letter had come and she had answered it, accepting the invitation. It was perfectly simple--didn't she see? She saw, her head drooped, telling Lorry about that letter which was never to arrive and that answer which was never to be written, bringing back the old, sick qualms. There had to be more inspiring talk of love before she was brought up to the point where he dared to leave her, felt his influence strong enough to last till the next meeting. He wondered irascibly if all home-bred, nice young girls were such fools and realized why he'd never liked them. That same afternoon Lorry had a visitor. While Chrystie was walking home, poised on the edge of the great exploit, at one moment seeing the tumult left by her flight, at the next that flight, wing and wing, through the golden future with her eagle mate, Lorry was sitting in the drawing-room talking to Mark Burrage. He had not told Crowder that he was going, had not decided to go till the morning after he had seen Crowder and the two Chinamen. When they had gone he had sat pondering, and that question which he had not liked to ask Fong and which he had only tentatively put to his friend, rose, insistent, demanding a more informed answer. Was this man--more than objectionable, probably criminal--paying court to Lorry? It was a horrible idea, that haunted him throughout the night. He recalled Mayer's manner to her the evening of his visit, and hers to him. Not that he thought she could have been attracted to the man; she was too fine, her instincts too true. But on the other hand she was young, so unlearned in the world's ways, so liable to be duped through her own innocence. His thoughts swung like a pendulum from point of torment to point of torment and in the morning he rose, determined on the visit. It was to satisfy himself and if possible drop a hint of warning. He never thought of Chrystie. She was a child and on that evening Mayer had treated her as such, paying her only the scanty meed of attention that politeness demanded.