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320 only his difference from the other men she knew that had made her do that? Unconsciously to herself, had she been growing to love Alan?

Constance could not, as yet, place Henry's part in the strange circumstances which had begun to reveal themselves with Alan's coming to Chicago; but Henry's hope that Uncle Benny and Alan were dead was beginning to make that clearer. She lay without voluntary movement in her berth, but her bosom was shaking with the thoughts which came to her.

Twenty years before, some dreadful event had altered Uncle Benny's life; his wife had known—or had learned—enough of that event so that she had left him. It had seemed to Constance and her father, therefore, that it must have been some intimate and private event. They had been confirmed in believing this, when Uncle Benny, in madness or in fear, had gone away, leaving everything he possessed to Alan Conrad. But Alan's probable relationship to Uncle Benny had not been explanation; she saw now that it had even been misleading. For a purely private event in Uncle Benny's life—even terrible scandal—could not make Henry fear, could not bring terror of consequences to himself. That could be only if Henry was involved in some peculiar and intimate way with what had happened to Uncle Benny. If he feared Uncle Benny's being found alive and feared Alan's being found alive too, now that Alan had discovered Uncle Benny, it was because he dreaded explanation of his own connection with what had taken place.

Constance raised her window shade slightly and looked out. It was still snowing; the train was running swiftly among low sand hills, snow-covered, and