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Rh for a moment wondered why that name should fret his memory with an uncaptured association—"Lavinia, unchain Nero at once!"

Conkling caught a sound like a gasp from the girl with the shears.

"Please don't mind," she said without turning her head. "He's so old!"

"Who's so old?" asked Conkling. He had begun to repack his thumb box.

"Nero. I have to soak his bread crusts for him. He has no teeth left. But I really think you ought to go!"

There was no misjudging her distress. It amounted almost to terror, and the mystery of it was sufficient to revive his audacity.

"May I come back?" he asked, tingling a trifle before the amazed innocence of her eyes.

"What good could it do?" she found the courage to inquire.

"That's what I intended to find out," he told her. He said it more determinedly than he had intended.