“Wait!” he broke in.  “Where is he now?  You were both together!  And you were both to be here at three.  What are you doing here alone at half-past two?”

A strange little exclamation, one almost of dismay, it seemed, escaped her.

“The Magpie left my place an hour ago—­to get his kit, I think.  And I came here at once because that was what you and I understood I was to do, wasn’t it?  Jimmie, you frighten me!  You are not yourself.  Don’t you remember the last words you said, as you nodded to me behind the Magpie’s back—­that you would be here before us?  There was no mistaking your meaning—­if I could get away from him, I was to come here and meet you.”

Jimmie Dale passed his hand nervously across his eyes.  Of course, he remembered now!  What a frightful turmoil his brain had been in!

“Yes; of course!” He tried to speak nonchalantly.  “I had forgotten for the moment.”

She caught his arm in a quick, tight hold, shaking him in a terrified way.

“You—­forget a thing like that!  Jimmie—­something terrible has happened.  Can’t you see that I am nearly mad with anxiety!  What is it?  What is it?  That package, Jimmie—­is it the package?”

He did not answer.  What could he say?  It meant life, hope, joy, everything that the world held for her—­and it was gone.

“Yes—­it is the package!” she whispered frantically.  “Quick, Jimmie!  Tell me!  It—­it was not there?  You—­you could not find it?”

“It was there,” he said, as though the words were literally forced from him.

“Then?  Then—­what, Jimmie?” The clutch on his arm was like a vise.

“They got it,” he said.  It was like a death sentence that he pronounced.  “It is destroyed.”

She did not speak or move—­save that her hands, as though nerveless and without strength, fell away from his arms, and dropped to her sides.  It was dark there under the stoop, though not so dark but that he could see her face.  It was gray—­gray as death.  And there was misery and fear and a pitiful helplessness in it—­and then she swayed a little, and he caught her in his arms.

“Gone!” she murmured in a dead, colourless way—­and suddenly laughed out sharply, hysterically.

“Don’t!  For God’s sake, don’t do that!” he pleaded wildly.

She looked at him then for a moment in strange quiet—­and lifted her hand and stroked his face in a numbed way.

“It—­it would have been better, Jimmie, wouldn’t it,” she said in the same monotonous voice, “it would have been better if—­if I had never found out anything, and they—­they had done the same to me that they did to—­to father.”

“Marie!  Marie!” It was the first time he had ever spoken her name, and it was on his lips now in an agony of tenderness and appeal.  “Don’t!  You mustn’t speak like that!”

“I’m tired,” she said.  “I—­I can’t fight any more.”