“Bill Gregg?  Yes, indeed.”

“I mean Ronicky.”

“Of course!  Very handsome!”

There was something in the voice of Caroline that made Ruth look down sharply to her face, but the girl was clever enough to mask her excitement and delight.

“Afterward, when you think over what he has said, it isn’t a great deal, but at the moment he seems to know a great deal—­about what’s going on inside one, don’t you think, Caroline?”

These continual appeals for advice, appeals from the infallible Ruth Tolliver, set the heart of Caroline beating.  There was most certainly something in the wind.

“I think he does,” agreed Caroline, masking her eyes.  “He has a way, when he looks at you, of making you feel that he isn’t thinking of anything else in the world but you.”

“Does he have that same effect on every one?” asked Ruth.  She added, after a moment of thought, “Yes, I suppose it’s just a habit of his.  I wish I knew.”

“Why?” queried Caroline, unable to refrain from the stinging little question.

“Oh, for no good reason—­just that he’s an odd character.  In my work, you know, one has to study character.  Ronicky Doone is a different sort of man, don’t you think?”

“Very different, dear.”

Then a great inspiration came to Caroline.  Ruth was a key which, she knew, could unlock nearly any door in the house of John Mark.

“Do you know what we are going to do?” she asked gravely, rising.

“Well?”

“We’re going to open that door together, and we’re going down the stairs—­together.”

“Together?  But we—­Don’t you know John Mark has given orders—­”

“That I’m not to leave the room.  What difference does that make?  They won’t dare stop us if you are with me, leading the way.”

“Caroline, are you mad?  When I come back—­”

“You’re not coming back.”

“Not coming back!”

“No, you’re going on with me!”

She took Ruth by the arms and turned her until the light struck into her eyes.  Ruth Tolliver, aghast at this sudden strength in one who had always been a meek follower, obeyed without resistance.

“But where?” she demanded.

“Where I’m going.”

“What?”

“To Ronicky Doone, my dear.  Don’t you see?”

The insistence bewildered Ruth Tolliver.  She felt herself driven irresistibly forward, with or without her own will.

“Caroline,” she protested, trying feebly to free herself from the commanding hands and eyes of her companion, “are you quite mad?  Go to him?  Why should I?  How can I?”

“Not as I’m going to Bill Gregg, with my heart in my hands, but to ask Ronicky Doone—­bless him!—­to take you away somewhere, so that you can begin a new life.  Isn’t that simple?”

“Ask charity of a stranger?”

“You know he isn’t a stranger, and you know it isn’t charity.  He’ll be happy.  He’s the kind that’s happy when he’s being of use to others?”