“Aren’t you going to be strong and brave?  You see, I need you to be.”

He was almost, for the first time, a little sad in his mood.

“Yes, dear, yes,” she declared, slipping her arms under his and pulling him tight.  “Oh, yes!  You can depend on me.  Oh, Frank, I love you so!  I’m so sorry.  Oh, I do hope you don’t fail!  But it doesn’t make any difference, dear, between you and me, whatever happens, does it?  We will love each other just the same.  I’ll do anything for you, honey!  I’ll do anything you say.  You can trust me.  They sha’n’t know anything from me.”

She looked at his still, pale face, and a sudden strong determination to fight for him welled up in her heart.  Her love was unjust, illegal, outlawed; but it was love, just the same, and had much of the fiery daring of the outcast from justice.

“I love you!  I love you!  I love you, Frank!” she declared.  He unloosed her hands.

“Run, sweet.  To-morrow at four.  Don’t fail.  And don’t talk.  And don’t admit anything, whatever you do.”

“I won’t.”

“And don’t worry about me.  I’ll be all right.”

He barely had time to straighten his tie, to assume a nonchalant attitude by the window, when in hurried Stener’s chief clerk—­pale, disturbed, obviously out of key with himself.

“Mr. Cowperwood!  You know that check I gave you last night?  Mr. Stener says it’s illegal, that I shouldn’t have given it to you, that he will hold me responsible.  He says I can be arrested for compounding a felony, and that he will discharge me and have me sent to prison if I don’t get it back.  Oh, Mr. Cowperwood, I am only a young man!  I’m just really starting out in life.  I’ve got my wife and little boy to look after.  You won’t let him do that to me?  You’ll give me that check back, won’t you?  I can’t go back to the office without it.  He says you’re going to fail, and that you knew it, and that you haven’t any right to it.”

Cowperwood looked at him curiously.  He was surprised at the variety and character of these emissaries of disaster.  Surely, when troubles chose to multiply they had great skill in presenting themselves in rapid order.  Stener had no right to make any such statement.  The transaction was not illegal.  The man had gone wild.  True, he, Cowperwood, had received an order after these securities were bought not to buy or sell any more city loan, but that did not invalidate previous purchases.  Stener was browbeating and frightening his poor underling, a better man than himself, in order to get back this sixty-thousand-dollar check.  What a petty creature he was!  How true it was, as somebody had remarked, that you could not possibly measure the petty meannesses to which a fool could stoop!