would have to leave on the morning train, call up Chrystie at seven, go
out and change the tickets, and meet her at Oakland. In the sudden
concentrating of perils, the elopement was gradually losing its
surreptitious character and becoming an affair openly conducted under
the public eye. But there was no other course. Even if they were seen on
the train they would reach Reno without interference, and once there he
would find a clergyman and have the marriage ceremony performed at once.
After that it didn't matter--he trusted in his power over Chrystie. In
the back of his mind rose a discomforting thought of an eventual
"squaring things" with Lorry, but he pushed it aside. Future difficulties
had no place in the present and its desperate urgencies. The thought of
Pancha also intruded, and on that he hung, for a moment, his face evil
with a thwarted rage, his hands instinctively bent into talons. Had he
dared he would like to have gone to her and--but he pushed that aside too
and went back to his plans and his pacings.

Lorry went home convinced of Mayer's ignorance. Finding him at the hotel
had done half, his arguments and manner the rest. And during the drive
back his explanation of Chrystie's disappearance had retained a consoling
plausibility. She held to it fiercely, conned it over, tried to force
herself to see the girl impishly bent on a foolish practical joke.

But when she was in her own room, the blank silence of the house about
her, it fell from her and left her defenseless against growing fears. It
was impossible to believe it--utterly foreign to Chrystie's temperament.
She racked her memory for occasions in the past when her sister had
indulged in such cruel teasing and not one came to her mind. No--she
wouldn't have done it, she couldn't--something more than a joke had made
Chrystie lie to her. A sumptuous figure in her glistening dress, she
moved about, rose and sat, jerked back the curtains, picked up and