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 and worship this Billie. Yet his first duty was to lighten the burden of her self-reproaches. They were too many, too unjust.

"Why, you were loving me all the while, dear," he soothed her in a voice breaking with the weight of its sympathetic devotion.

"But I didn't do a thing," she wailed, inconsolable.

"You came down to the jail the night of the fire."

Abruptly the girl lifted her tear-stained face with a new fright upon it. "That—that jailor told on me," she divined; then managed a sporting half-smile.

"Yes; he did," said Henry with satisfaction; "but only just before you got here or I'd have been spared a good deal and got to you sooner; for I'd already had a chance to know how you were feeling that night because I saw you."

"Saw me?" breathed Billie, beautiful in her surprise and incomprehension.

"Yes. When you came to the jail I wasn't even here. I'd gone up to Humboldt House to make sure that you were safe. I was in the rose garden when you came back—you passed within a yard of me; I stood within a foot of you."

"You—you were there? In the rose garden?" She beamed up at him, her eyes jeweled by their late moisture. "Oh, I can't believe it! And I was wanting you so! But—the woman outside," she suddenly remembered, bitter with herself but still firm in her resolution. "She has won the right to you. Go! Go to her quick, or—oh, Henry, dear, I—I can't stand it; I can't!" Her face was white again, lips quivering, tears starting.

But Harrington could smile quite light-heartedly