“That’s an ugly thing to go to prison for,” he remarked, slipping it into his pocket.  “It was a stupid thing to do, anyhow, you know.  You couldn’t have got away with it—­unless,” he added, looking over the parapet as though struck with a sudden idea, “unless you had a confederate below.”

He heard the rush of her skirts and he was only just in time.  Nothing, in fact, but a considerable amount of presence of mind and the full exercise of a strength which was continually providing surprises for his acquaintances, was sufficient to save her.  Their struggles upon the very edge of the roof dislodged a brick from the palisading, which went hurtling down into the street.  They both paused to watch it, his arms still gripping her and one foot pressed against an iron rod.  It was immediately after they had seen it pitch harmlessly into the road that a new sensation came to this phlegmatic young man.  For the first time in his life, he realized that it was possible to feel a certain pleasurable emotion in the close grasp of a being of the opposite sex.  Consequently, although she had now ceased to struggle, he kept his arms locked around her, looking into her face with an interest intense enough, but more analytical than emotional, as though seeking to discover the meaning of this curious throbbing of his pulses.  She herself, as though exhausted, remained quite passive, shivering a little in his grasp and breathing like a hunted animal whose last hour has come.  Their eyes met; then she tore herself away.

“You are a hateful person,” she said deliberately, “a hateful, interfering person.  I detest you.”

“I think that we will go down now,” he replied.

He raised the trap-door and glanced at her significantly.  She held her skirts closely together and passed through it without looking at him.  She stepped lightly down the ladder and without hesitation descended also a flight of uncarpeted attic stairs.  Here, however, upon the landing, she awaited him with obvious reluctance.

“Are you going to send for the police?” she asked without looking at him.

“No,” he answered.

“Why not?”

“If I had meant to give you away I should have told Mrs. Fitzgerald at once that I had seen you take her bracelet, instead of following you out on to the roof.”

“Do you mind telling me what you do propose to do, then?” she continued still without looking at him, still without the slightest note of appeal in her tone.

He withdrew the bracelet from his pocket and balanced it upon his finger.

“I am going to say that I took it for a joke,” he declared.

She hesitated.

“Mrs. Fitzgerald’s sense of humor is not elastic,” she warned him.

“She will be very angry, of course,” he assented, “but she will not believe that I meant to steal it.”

The girl moved slowly a few steps away.

“I suppose that I ought to thank you,” she said, still with averted face and sullen manner.  “You have really been very decent.  I am much obliged.”