“Is there no clew to the—­thief?  Have they no idea at all?  Haven’t those wonderful detectives yet got on—­his track?”

North shook his head.  “I had a letter by yesterday’s boat from Mr. Litterny about another matter, and he spoke of this.  He said the police were baffled—­that he believed now that it could never be traced.”

“Thank God!” Katherine said, slowly and distinctly, and North stared in astonishment.

“What?” His tone was incredulous.

“Oh; don’t take me so seriously,” said the girl, impatiently.  “It’s only that I can’t sympathize with your multimillionaire, who loses a little of his heaps of money, against some poor soul to whom that little may mean life or death—­life or death, maybe, for his nearest and dearest.  Mr. Litterny has had a small loss, which he won’t feel in a year from now.  The thief, the rascal, the scoundrel, as you call him so fluently, has escaped for now, perhaps, with his ill-gotten gains, but he is a hunted thing, living with a black terror of being found out—­a terror which clutches him when he prays and when he dances.  It’s the thief I’m sorry for—­I’m sorry for him—­I’m sorry for him.”  Her voice was agitated and uneven beyond what seemed reasonable.

“‘The way of the transgressor is hard,’” Norman North said, slowly, and looked across the shifting sand-stretch to the inevitable sea, and spoke the words pitilessly, as if an inevitable law spoke through him.

They cut into the girl’s soul.  A quick gasp of pain broke from her, and the man turned and saw her face and sprang to his feet.

“Come,” he said,—­“come home,” and held out his hands.

She let him take hers, and he lifted her lightly, and did not let her hands go.  For a second they stood, and into the silence a deep boom of the water against the beach thundered and died away.  He drew the hands slowly toward him till he held them against him.  There seemed not to be any need for words.

Half an hour later, as they walked back through the sweet loneliness of Springfield Avenue, North said:  “You’ve forgotten something.  You’ve forgotten that this is the day you were to tell me why you had the bad manners to laugh at me before you knew me.  Now that we are engaged it’s your duty to tell me if I’m ridiculous.”

There was none of the responsive, soft laughter he expected.  “We’re not engaged—­we can’t be engaged,” she threw back, impetuously, and as he looked at her there was suffering in her face.

“What do you mean?  You told me you loved me.”  His voice was full of its curious mixture of gentleness and sternness, and she shrank visibly from the sternness.

“Don’t be hard on me,” she begged, like a frightened child, and he caught her hand with a quick exclamation.  “I’ll tell you—­everything.  Not only that little thing about my laughing, but—­but more—­everything.  Why I cannot be engaged to you.  I must tell you—­I know it—­but, oh! not to-day—­not for a little while!  Let me have this little time to be happy.  You sail a week from to-day.  I’ll write it all for you, and you can read it on the way to New York.  That will do—­won’t that do?” she pleaded.