the cloak about her young mistress's neck, went obediently back to the house. Harrington advanced to the very end of the bench. He had but to lean forward to lay a hand upon her shoulder. He could hear her sigh. And he could see her perfectly now. Poor, dear, bewildered girl! She had been made to suffer so. What if she had left him succorless? She was entirely surrounded by lying sycophants who had persuaded her that white was black. It was so impossible to reproach her now. She looked frail to him and wasted—as frail as he had felt till freedom gave him strength once more.
But as he considered in what way he would best announce his presence and what he would best do first for her, the realization came to him abruptly that he was not free. He was not free—he was merely out—by the grace of Adam John's acetylene torch, out to attend to certain responsibilities which the catastrophe had forced upon him, and only one of which his presence here in the garden advanced.
He felt a great pity for her as she bowed there—a great yearning for her. He wanted to take her tenderly in his arms, offer his strong young strength to bulwark her in this hour of awful calamity; but what had he to offer—really? There was nothing in him to bulwark, to comfort her; the sight of him would only shame her—shock her with the perception that, besides the other things which she believed of him, he was also a coward who had broken from his jail.
The town was burning up—but not the complaint against him. He was still under charges, under a cloud, under the ban of the law, the ban of his townsmen, the ban of . . . her. Until circumstances lifted that ban, he could be of no use at all. He must wait—
