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, you know—would it have been any good? I mean, could I have made you care, do you think?"

"Are you serious, Mr. Forbes?"

"Serious! Good Lord, yes! I was never more serious in my life! You don't understand." He frowned perplexedly. "Why, tonight, when you go—on that train—I'll feel like—like a dog that's been kicked out into the street to starve. The bottom of things is just falling out completely. It's as though, since I saw you, I'd been going up and up in a bucket, past one level after another with the blue sky and the real world getting nearer and nearer with every wind of the windlass. And now, just when I was beginning to smell the surface and feel the warmth of the sun, the cable's broke and I'm falling straight for the bottom with nothing ahead but a dull thud. You bet it's serious," he ended grimly.

"Then—then I'm sorry," she said gently. After a pause she added; "That is, if you really must go back."