Her hand touched his for a moment and he was repaid.

“Don’t think too well of me,” she begged.  “I don’t want to disappoint you.”

Some one pushed open the swing doors and she started nervously.  It was only a waiter who passed through into the bar.

“What I think of you,” Tavernake said slowly, “nothing could alter, but because I am stupid, I suppose, there is quite a good deal that I cannot understand.  I cannot understand, for instance, why they should suspect you of having anything to do with your husband’s disappearance.  You can prove where you were when he left you?”

“Quite easily,” she answered, “only, unfortunately, no one seems to have seen him go.  He timed his departure so cunningly that he apparently vanished into thin air.  Even then,” she continued, “but for one thing I don’t suppose that any one would have had suspicions.  I dare say Mr. Pritchard told you that before we left New York my husband sold out some of his property and brought it over to Europe with him in cash.  We had both determined that we would live abroad and have nothing more to do with America.  It was not I who persuaded him to do this.  It made no difference to me.  If he had run away and left me, the courts would have given me money.  If he had died and I had been a widow, he would have left me his property.  But simply because there was all this money in our hands, and because he disappeared, his people and this man Pritchard suspect me.”

“It is wicked,” he muttered.

She turned slowly towards him.

“Mr. Tavernake,” she said, “do you know that you can help me very much indeed?”

“I only wish I could,” he replied.  “Try me.”

“Can’t you see,” she went on, “that the great thing against me is that Beatrice left me suddenly when we were on that wretched expedition, and came back alone?  She is in London, I know, quite close to me, and still she hides.  Pritchard asks himself why.  Mr. Tavernake, go and tell her what people are saying, go and tell her everything that has happened, let her understand that her keeping away is doing me a terrible injury, beg her to come and let people see that we are reconciled, and warn her, too, against Pritchard.  Will you do this for me?”

“Of course I will,” Tavernake answered.  “I will see her to-morrow.”

Elizabeth drew a little sigh of relief.

“And you’ll let me know what she says?” she asked, rising.

“I shall be only too glad to,” Tavernake assured her.

“Good-night!”

She looked up into his face with a smile which had turned the heads of hardened stagers in New York.  No wonder that Tavernake felt his heart beat against his ribs!  He took her hands and held them for a moment.  Then he turned abruptly away.

“Good-night!” he said.

He disappeared through the swing doors.  She strolled across the room to where her friends were sitting in a circle, laughing and talking.  Her father, who had just come in and joined them, gripped her by the arm as she sat down.