When he returned home that night there was a singular-looking telegram awaiting him on the hall table.  His hands shook as he took it up for it suddenly came over him that it was a cable.  It had never occurred to him that she might do that; that there was anything more expeditious than the mail.

“Sailing by Touraine arriving sixth Christine Latimer.”

He read and re-read it until the type grew blurred.  What did it mean?  He asked himself that a thousand times.  What did it mean?  He sought his room and locked the door, striding up and down with agitation, the cablegram clenched in his hand.  He was beside himself, triumphant and yet in a fever of misgiving.  Was it not perhaps a coincidence—­not an answer to his own letter, but one of those extraordinary instances of what is called telepathy?  Her words would bear either interpretation.  Possibly the whole family was returning with her.  Possibly she had never seen his letter at all.  Possibly it was following her back to America, unopened and undelivered.

“Sailing by Touraine arriving sixth.”  Was that an answer?  Perhaps indeed it was.  Perhaps it was a woman’s way of saying “yes”; it might even be, in her surpassing kindness, that she was coming to break her refusal as gently as she might, too considerate of his feelings to write it baldly on paper.  At least, amid all these doubts, it assured him of one thing, her regard; that he was not forgotten; that he had been mistaken in thinking himself ignored.

He spent the next eight days in a cruel and heart-breaking suspense.  He could hardly eat or sleep.  He grew thin and started at a sound.  He paid a dollar to have the Touraine’s arrival telegraphed to the office; another dollar to have it telegraphed to the boarding-house; he was fearful that one or the other might miscarry, and repeatedly warned the landlady of a possible message for him in the middle of the night.

“It means a great deal to me,” he said.  “It means everything to me.  I don’t know what I’d do if I missed the Touraine!”

Of course he did not miss the Touraine.  He was on the wharf hours before her coming.  He exasperated everyone with his questions.  He was turned out of all kinds of barriers; he earned the distrust of the detectives; he became a marked man.  He was certainly there for no good, that tall guy in the slouch hat, his lean hands fidgeting for a surreptitious pearl-necklace or an innocent-looking umbrella full of diamonds—­one who, in their language, was a guy that would bear watching.

The steamer came alongside, and Raymond gazed up at the tier upon tier of faces.  At length, with a catch in his heart, he caught sight of Miss Latimer, who smiled and waved her hand to him.  He scanned her narrowly for an answer to his doubts; and these increased the more he gazed at her.  It seemed a bad sign to see her so calm, so composed; worse still to see her occasionally in animated conversation