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290 fold; and now the valiant guardian was turning round and round and round preparatory to lying down to sleep. For Washington would go to sleep again, naturally.

Often it occurred to him what a remarkable piece of machinery the human brain was. He could dig up all this dry information with the precise accuracy of an economist, all the while his actual thoughts upon Kitty. His nights were nightmares. And all this unhappiness because he had been touched with the lust for loot. Fundamentally, this catastrophe could be laid to the drums of jeopardy.

The alluring possibility of finding those damnable green stones—the unsuspected kink in his moral rectitude—had tumbled him into this pit. Had not Kitty pronounced the name Stefani Gregor—in his mind always linked with the emeralds—he would have summoned an ambulance and had Hawksley carried off, despite Kitty's protests; and perhaps he would have seen her but two or three times before sailing, seen her in conventional and unemotional parts. At any rate, there would have been none of this peculiar intimacy—Kitty coming to him in tears, opening her young heart to him and discovering all its loneliness. If she loved some chap it would not be so hard, the temptation would not be so keen—to cheat her. Marry her, and then tell her. This dogged his thoughts like a murderer's deed, terrible in the watches of the night. Marry