"There is a great deal connected with it, or rather my side of it," he declared, "which I shall never tell you."
"You trust me?" she asked a little timidly, "You don't think that I should betray you to my husband?"
He laughed the idea to scorn.
"It isn't that," he assured her. "The machinery I have knocked into shape is crude in its way, but the lives and liberty of those underneath depend upon its workings."
"It sounds mysterious," she confessed.
"If you say that it is to be an alliance, Josephine," he decided, "it shall be. I need your help enormously, but you must make up your mind, before you say the last word, to run a certain measure of risk."
"What risk is there for me to run?" she asked, with a smile of confidence. "What measure of unhappiness could be crowded into my life which is not already there? I insist upon it—John—that you accept me as an ally without any more hesitation."
He bent and kissed her hands.
"This, then, is final," he said. "Within the next twenty-four hours you will be ready if necessary?"
"I am ready now—any time—always," she promised him.