“What is the matter, Jack?” she breathed.  “Why do you look at me so steadily?”

He ought to have let her go then; he hesitated, wondering which Jack she supposed him to be; and before he realised it her arms were on his shoulders, her mouth nearer to his.

“Jack, you frighten me!  What is it?”

“N-nothing,” he continued to stammer.

“Yes, there is.  Does your—­your wife suspect—­anything——­”

“No, she doesn’t,” said Duane grimly, trying to free himself without seeming to.  “I’ve got an appointment——­”

But the girl said piteously:  “It isn’t—­Geraldine, is it?”

“What!”

“You—­you admitted that she attracted you—­for a little while....  Oh, I did forgive you, Jack; truly I did with all my miserable heart!  I was so fearfully unhappy—­I would have done anything.” ...  Her face flushed scarlet.  “And I—­did....  But you do love me, don’t you?” And the next moment her lips were on his with a sob.

Duane reached back and quietly unclasped her fingers.  Then very gently he forced her to a seat on a great fallen log.  Still looking up at him, droopingly pathetic in contrast to her gay debut with him, she naively slipped up the mask over her forehead and passed her hand across her pretty blue eyes.  Sylvia Quest!

The sinister significance of her attitude flashed over him, all doubt vanished, all the comedy of their encounter was gone in an instant.  Over him swept a startled sequence of emotions—­bitter contempt for Dysart, scorn of the wretchedly equivocal situation and of the society that bred it, a miserable desire to spare her, vexation at himself for what he had unwittingly stumbled upon.  The last thought persisted, dominated; succeeded by a disgusted determination that she must be spared the shame and terror of what she had inadvertently revealed; that she must never know she had not been speaking to Dysart himself.

“If I tell you that all is well—­and if I tell you no more than that,” he whispered, “will you trust me?”

“Have I not done so, Jack?”

The tragedy in her lifted eyes turned him cold with fury.

“Then wait here until I return,” he said.  “Promise.”

“I promise,” she sighed, “but I don’t understand.  I’m a—­a little frightened, dear.  But I—­believe you.”

He swung on his heel and made toward the lights once more, and a moment later the man he sought passed within a few feet of him, and Duane knew him by his costume, which was a blue replica of his own gray silks.

“Dysart!” he said sharply.

The masked figure swung gracefully around and stood still, searching the shadowy woodland inquiringly.

“I want a word with you.  Here—­not in the light, if you please.  You recognise my voice, don’t you?”

“Is that you, Mallett?” asked Dysart coldly, as the former appeared in the light for an instant and turned back again with a curt gesture.