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 into official wariness. It was as though he had put the shutters up in front of his soul. She accepted the movement as a signal of dismissal. She rose from her chair and quietly lowered and adjusted her veil. Yet through that lowered veil she stood looking down at Never-Fail Blake for a moment or two. She looked at him with grave yet casual curiosity, as tourists look at a ruin that has been pointed out to them as historic.

"You did n't give me back Connie Binhart's note," she reminded him as she paused with her gloved finger-tips resting on the desk edge.

"D' you want it?" he queried with simulated indifference, as he made a final and lingering study of it.

"I 'd like to keep it," she acknowledged. When, without meeting her eyes, he handed it over to her, she folded it and restored it to her pocket-book, carefully, as though vast things depended on that small scrap of paper.

Never-Fail Blake, alone in his office and still assailed by the vaguely disturbing perfumes which she had left behind her, pondered her