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 All at once he raised his head and looked about him. The color returned a little way into his face.

"The blinds," he said, "are they shut?"

"Yes," said Lily. "You are safe here."

She had thrown off the old sealskin coat and sat by him clad in the black and silver kimono, seductive, beautiful, perfect, save for the tips of her silver slippers all soaked by the melted snow. The kimono had come open at the neck and left her white soft throat exposed. Krylenko was watching her now in a puzzled fashion. He behaved almost as if she terrified him in some new and indefinable way.

"I let myself in with a key," he told her. "A key Miss Irene gave me. She told me to use it if ever I had to hide." He paused for a moment and took a second drink from the flask. "You see, I am safe here because it is the last place they would look for me. They would never look for me in the house of a rich man. They wouldn't expect to find me in the house of an American, a wealthy lady."

He looked up at her in a singularly straightforward fashion.

"I suppose," he said, "you too are on our side."

Lily dipping a bit of linen into the basin did not reply for a moment. At last she said, "I'd never thought about it one way or another until now. It doesn't matter, I suppose. But you needn't fear what I'll do. I'd rather have you here than the police."

"If they caught me now," he continued weakly, "they'd hang me. I wouldn't have a chance with Judge Weissman and the rest. Any jury in the Town would hang me. You see there were men killed out there in the park . . . men on both sides. That fellow over by the fire . . . he's dead. I stopped to make certain. I didn't kill anybody myself, but that makes no difference. It's me they're after. They've been waiting for a chance like this."

He spoke English with a curious lack of accent, for the chaste Irene as a teacher was thorough. He spoke it deliberately and rather carefully to be sure, but without serious faults. His manner was neither shy nor awkward. It was the manner of a man unused to women's company, of a man who had never before addressed a great lady; for Irene could not properly be