"What do you mean?" knowing very well what he meant.
"If he found you on his trail," with cunning deliberation, so that every word beat heart and brain like a hammer, "and if he is really Horace Endicott, he would only have to give your character and your address——"
"To the dogs," she shrieked in a sudden access of horror.
Then she lay very still in his arms, and the man laughed quietly to himself, sure that he had subdued her and driven her crazy scheme into limbo. The wild creature had one dread and by reason of it one master. Never had she been so amenable to discipline as under Dillon's remote and affable authority. Curran had no fear of consequences in studying the secret years of Arthur Dillon's existence. The study might reveal things which a young man preferred to leave in the shadows, but would not deliver up to Sonia her lost Horace; and even if Arthur came to know what they were doing, he could smile at Edith's vagaries.
"What shall we do?" he ventured to say at last.
"Find Horace Endicott in Arthur Dillon," was the unexpected answer, energetic, but sighed rather than spoken. "I fear him, I love him, I hate him, and I'm going to destroy him before he destroys me. Begin to-night."
CHAPTER XXVIII.
A FIRST TEST.
Curran could not study the Endicott problem. His mind had lost edge in the vain process, getting as confused over details as the experimenter in perpetual motion after an hundred failures. In favor of Edith he said to himself that her instincts had always been remarkable, always helpful; and her theory compared well with the twenty upon which he had worked years to no purpose. Since he could not think the matter out, he went straight on in the fashion which fancy had suggested. Taking it for granted that Dillon and Endicott were the same man, he must establish the connection; that is, discover the moment when Horace Endicott passed from his own into the character of Arthur Dillon.