“You ran around the house to the lane, and entered it by the turn-stile.”

“Yes, and so quickly that I had time to splash myself with mud and lose all my natural characteristics before any one came to find me.  It was Anitra they met, panting and disheveled, at the head of the lane; Anitra in appearance, Anitra in heart.  I did not act a part; I was Anitra; Anitra as I had conceived her.  To me she was and is an active, living personality.  Whenever I faced you in her character, I thought with her half-educated mind; felt with her half-disciplined heart.  I even shut my ears to sounds; I would not hear; half the time I did not.  Nor did I fall back into my old ways when I was alone.  From the minute Georgian closed her door upon you for the last time, and I darkened my skin in preparation for a permanent assumption of Anitra’s individuality, I became the imaginary twin, in thought, feeling, and action.  It was my only safeguard.  Alas! had I only gone one step further and made myself really deaf!”

The cry was bitterness itself, but it passed unheeded.  Mr. Ransom could not speak and Hazen had other cares in mind.

“Where is this woman Bela now?” he asked.

Georgian was too absorbed or too unwilling, to answer.

He repeated the question, this time with an authority she could not resist.  Rising slowly, she faced him for one impressive moment.

“My God!” came from her lips in startled surprise.  “How pale you are!  Sit down or you will fall.”

He shook his head impatiently.

“It’s nothing.  Answer my question.  Where is this Bela now?”

“I don’t know.  She is beyond my reach—­and yours.  I told her to lose herself.  I think she is clever enough to do so.  The money I paid her was worth a few years spent in obscurity.”

The spark lighting his eye brightened into baleful flame, but she met it calmly.  An indomitable spirit confronted one equally indomitable, and his was the first to succumb.  Turning from her, Hazen took out pencil and paper from his pocket, and, crossing to the window with that same peculiar and oscillating motion of which he seemed unconscious, or which he found it impossible to subdue, he wrote a line, folded it, and before even Harper was aware of his purpose threw up the sash and flung it out, uttering a quick, sharp whistle as he did so.

“What’s that you’re up to?” shouted the lawyer, rushing to the window and peering over the other’s shoulder into the open space below, from which a man was just disappearing.

“Am I a prisoner of the police that you should ask me that?” returned Hazen, haughtily.

“No, but you should be,” retorted Harper.  “I don’t like your ways, Hazen.  I don’t like what you and your sister have said about the Cause and the conscienceless obedience exacted from its members.  I don’t like any of it; least of all this passing over of poor Bela’s name to one whose duty it will possibly be to make trouble for her.”