Her mind wandered back to a time, months before, when she had learned the bitter lesson of what it was to be a legal outcast, and had determined always to keep within the law, no matter how close to the edge of things she went.
Mackenzie continued looking at her, as if waiting for the answer to his first question.
"No," she said slowly, "I am not going to hand you over. I never had any such intention. We are in each other's power. But you cannot go about openly, even in New York, now. Some one besides myself must have seen that article."
Graeme listened blankly. It was true. His fancied security in the city was over. He had fled to New York because there, in the mass of people, he could best sink his old identity and take on a new.
She leaned her head on her hand and her elbow on the table and looked deeply into his eyes. "Let me take those securities," she said. "I will be able to do safely what you cannot do."
Graeme did not seem now to consider the fortune for which he had risked so much. The woman before him was enough.
"Will you?" he asked eagerly.
"I will do with them as I would for myself, better, because—because it is a trust," she accepted.
"More than a trust," he added, as he leaned over in turn and in spite of other diners in the restaurant took her hand.
There are times when the rest of the critical world and its frigid opinions are valueless. Constance did not withdraw her hand. Rather she watched in his eyes the subtle physical change in the man that her very touch produced, watched and felt a response in herself.