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Rh would reassure her and merely put her off; he was not capable of controlling his voice so as to do that.

"Please don't ask me just now, Miss Sherrill," he managed. "I'll tell you what I can—later."

His reply, he recognized, only made her more certain that there was something the matter, but he could not add anything to it. He found Luke, when he went back to him, still in coma; the blood-shot veins stood out against the ghastly grayness of his face, and his stertorous breathing sounded through the rooms.

Constance Sherrill had come in a few moments before from an afternoon reception; the servants told her at once that something was happening at Mr. Corvet's. They had heard shouts and had seen a man pounding upon the door there, but they had not taken it upon themselves to go over there. She had told the chauffeur to wait with the motor and had run at once to the telephone and called Alan; his attempt to put her off made her certain that what had happened was not finished but was still going on. Her anxiety and the sense of their responsibility for Alan overrode at once all other thought. She told the servants to call her father at the office and tell him something was wrong at Mr. Corvet's; then she called her maid and hurried out to the motor.

"To Mr. Corvet's—quickly!" she directed.

Looking through the front doors of her car as it turned into Astor Street, she saw a young man, carrying a doctor's case, run up the steps of Corvet's house. This, quite unreasonably since she had just talked with Alan, added to her alarm; she put her hand on the catch of the door and opened it a little so as to be