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 little planet, you can't tell me, He is making any headway at all."

She felt as if he had hit her in the face. "I do believe," she gasped. "And—and—no matter what happens"—his grip was on her shrinking knees—"to me—or to mine—I shall go on believing."

"And I shall go on disbelieving." He chuckled softly. "All the same, I like your pluck!" The father was speaking again to a favorite daughter. Helen shivered at the intolerable memories wrought by that tone. "How well you fight with your back to the wall." He raised her hand in his and pressed his lips upon it lightly. "I respect your courage." Voice and smile grew even more paternal. "And between ourselves, that is the only thing in the life one knows that one does respect. Courage. That alone is sacred. Courage. No matter when, no matter where one meets that, one pays homage."

Smiling at his thoughts, he got up from the sofa on which they sat. As he stood before her in the arrogance of his mental and physical power, she could not kill a sense, try to stifle it as she would, that here perhaps was the noblest thing on which her eyes had looked.

He still kept close track of her mind. "Bless you, dear child!" She felt his eyes pass through her like a sword, and she bit her lip in an agony that had a touch of ecstasy. And then came terror again. She fought against a sob she could not control. Hearing