But Burke spoke no word.  He sat rigid, looking at her.

A feeling of coldness ran through her—­such a feeling as she had experienced on her wedding-day under the skeleton-tree, the chill that comes from the heart of a storm.  Slowly she relaxed her hold upon him.  Her tears were gone, but she felt choked, unlike herself, curiously impotent.

“Shall we go back?” she said.

She made as if she would rise, but he stayed her with a gesture, and her weakness held her passive.

“So you have forgiven him!” he said.

His tone was curt.  He almost flung the words.

She braced herself, instinctively aware of coming strain.  But she answered him gently.  “You can’t be angry with a person when you are desperately sorry for him.”

“I see.  And you hold me in a great measure responsible for his fall?  I am to make good, am I?”

He did not raise his voice, but there was something in it that made her quail.  She looked up at him in swift distress.

“No, no!  Of course not—­of course not!  Partner, please don’t glare at me like that!  What have I done?”

He dropped his eyes abruptly from her startled face, and there followed a silence so intense that she thought he did not even breathe.

Then, in a very low voice:  “You’ve raised Cain,” he said.

She shivered.  There was something terrible in the atmosphere.  Dumbly she waited, feeling that protest would but make matters worse.

He turned himself from her at length, and sat with his chin on his hands, staring out to the fading sunset.

When he spoke finally, the hard note had gone out of his voice.  “Do you think it’s going to make life any easier to bring that young scoundrel back?”

“I wasn’t thinking of that,” she said, “It was only—­” she hesitated.

“Only?” said Burke, without turning.

With difficulty she answered him.  “Only that probably you and I are the only people in the world who could do anything to help him.  And so—­somehow it seems our job.”

Burke digested this in silence.  Then:  “And what are you going to do with him when you’ve got him?” he enquired.

Again she hesitated, but only momentarily.  “I shall want you to help me, partner,” she said appealingly.

He made a slight movement that passed unexplained.  “You may find me—­rather in the way—­before you’ve done,” he said.

“Then you won’t help me?” she said, swift disappointment in her voice.

He turned round to her.  His face was grim, but it held no anger.  “You’ve asked a pretty hard thing of me,” he said.  “But—­yes, I’ll help you.”

“You will?” She held out her hand to him.  “Oh, partner, thank you—­awfully!”

He gripped her hand hard.  “On one condition,” he said.

“Oh, what?” She started a little and her face whitened.

He squeezed her fingers with merciless force.  “Just that you will play a straight game with me,” he said briefly.