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Rh blessed decalogue itself—as long as you play the game!"

So he had gone away, after being Dan's best man, to his little plantation in South Carolina.

For two years he had not seen her, had not written to her, had even tried not to think of her—

And there she stood—now—on the threshold of his room in the discreet little hotel where he had put up, with a grinning, plump boy in buttons, his hand well weighted with money, winking as if to say:

"It's O. K., boss. I'm goin' to keep mum, all right, all right!"

Then the boy closed the door, and the bolt snapped into the lock with a little steely, jeering click.

She was dressed in white from head to foot; only her lips were red, and the long-stemmed Gloire de Dijon rose that she held in her hand.

She spoke in a matter-of-fact voice, as if continuing a conversation that had been interrupted just for a second by the entry of a servant or the postman's whistle:

"Don't you see, Roger? I had to come. I had