Still looking up at him, droopingly pathetic in contrast to her gay debut with him, she naively slipped up the mask over her forehead and passed her hand across her pretty blue eyes.

Sylvia Quest! The sinister significance of her attitude flashed over him, all doubt vanished, all the comedy of their encounter was gone in an instant.

Over him swept a startled sequence of emotions--bitter contempt for Dysart, scorn of the wretchedly equivocal situation and of the society that bred it, a miserable desire to spare her, vexation at himself for what he had unwittingly stumbled upon.

The last thought persisted, dominated; succeeded by a disgusted determination that she must be spared the shame and terror of what she had inadvertently revealed; that she must never know she had not been speaking to Dysart himself.
"If I tell you that all is well--and if I tell you no more than that," he whispered, "will you trust me ?" "Have I not done so, Jack ?" The tragedy in her lifted eyes turned him cold with fury.
"Then wait here until I return," he said.

"Promise." "I promise," she sighed, "but I don't understand.