CHAPTER VI.
SAM did not wait until Arthur Sinclair left, but, all ardor and impatience, stole in at the Warhams' front gate at ten o'clock.
He dropped to the grass behind a clump of lilacs, and to calm his nerves and to make the time pass more quickly, smoked a cigarette, keeping its lighted end carefully hidden in the hollow of his hand.

He was not twenty feet away, was seeing and hearing, when Arthur kissed Ruth good night.

He laughed to himself.

"How disappointed she looked last night when she saw I wasn't going to do that!" What a charmer Susie must be when the thought of her made the idea of kissing as pretty a girl as Ruth uninteresting, almost distasteful! Sinclair departed; the lights in parlor and hall went out; presently light appeared through the chinks in some of the second-story shutters.

Then followed three-quarters of an hour of increasing tension.