HERRICK HEARS A BELL RING
"Don't let them take me!" Christina entreated. "Don't let them lock me up! That door—! Turn the key!"
Without demur he turned it. He was in that commotion of bewildered feeling where one shock after another deliciously and terribly strikes upon the heart, and anything seems possible. From the trembling girl his pulses took a myriad alarms; apprehension of he knew not what ran riot in them and credited the suggestions of her terror; but all the while his blood rushed through him, warm and singing, and his heart glowed. She was here, with him! She had fled here and clung to him for defense! She loved him! In no dream, now, did she lie back there, in the deep chair beside his fire, with her hand clasping his eagerly as he knelt and her shoulder leaning against his. It was keener than any dream; it was that fullness of life, which, even at Herrick's age, we have mostly ceased to expect.
"There are detectives shadowing me," Christina said. "Don't deny it—I know! They've been following me from the beginning!"
