Page:Waylaid by Wireless - Balmer - 1909.djvu/86

Rh !" Preston begged. "I didn't mean that you should know; and I don't ordinarily play that way. Just to-night," he pleaded aside to her," I wanted to for a special object, truly."

"What was it?" the girl demanded.

The Englishman, holding Preston's coins in his hand, had bowed and arisen.

"Watch him, Miss Varris!" Preston cried. "This was the purpose—to test his true belief in me. See! If he puts those coins into his pocket, he believes—in spite of what he appears to have heard to-day—that I am not the thief. But if he drops them into the box for indignant clergymen there before him now, he must suspect me. This is the test."

"I see," the girl nodded, as the Englishman stood a fraction of a meditative instant before the alms box and then let the little metal pieces slip into the slot.

"And so!" Preston sank back. "I can't tell you what a fall that is for me. Yesterday, Miss Varris, after seven long days of carefully cultivating the confidence of an Englishman 66