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90 that, even if it costs you something, won't you? Because it will be the only right, the only honorable course to take—you will be the happier for it in the end, Mr. Tourmalin, I am sure you will!"

After all, it seemed to him that she must understand about the Time Cheques—or, why should she urge him to give them up if Sophia demanded such a sacrifice?

"No, I shall not," he said; "I shall miss these times terribly. You don't know what they are to me, or you wouldn't speak like that!"

"Mr. Tourmalin!" she cried, "I—I must not listen to you! You can't possibly mean what you seem to mean. It is wrong—wrong to me, and wrong to her—to say things that—that, for all you know, you are not free to say! Don't let me think badly of you!"

Peter was absolutely horrified! What had he said to agitate her like that? He had merely meant to express the pleasure he found in these brief and stolen visits to the Boomerang; and she had misconstrued him like this! At all hazards, he must explain now, if it took him days to make it clear.