Page:Frank Packard - The Adventures of Jimmie Dale.djvu/294

290 way. Still silence. She neither moved nor spoke. His hand dropped slowly to his side. There was a queer, twisted smile upon his lips.

"You win!" he said hoarsely.

"Thank you, Jimmie," she said simply.

"And your name, who you are"—he was speaking, but he did not seem to recognise his own voice—"the hundred other things I've sworn I'd make you explain when I found you, are all taboo as well, I suppose!"

"Yes," she said.

He laughed bitterly.

"Don't you know," he cried out, "that between the police and the underworld, our house of cards is likely to collapse at any minute—that they are hunting the Gray Seal day and night! Is it to be always like this—that I am never to know—until it is too late!"

She came toward him out of the darkness impulsively.

"They will never get you, Jimmie," she said, in a suppressed voice. "And some day, I promise you now, you shall have your reward for to-night. You shall know—everything."

"When?" The word came from him with fierce eagerness.

"I do not know," she answered gently. "Soon, perhaps—perhaps sooner than either of us imagine."

"And by that you mean—what?" he asked, and his hand reached out for her again through the blackness.

This time she did not draw away. There was an instant's hesitation; then she spoke again hurriedly, a note of anxiety in her voice.

"You are beginning all over again, aren't you, Jimmie? And I have told you that to-night I can explain nothing. And, besides, it is what has brought me here that counts now, and every moment is of"

"Yes, I know," he interposed; "but, then, at least you will tell me one thing: Why did you come to-night, instead of sending me a letter as you always have before?"

"Because it is different to-night than it ever was before,"