"Must I go now—in the moonlight clear?
Would God that it were dark,
That I might pass like a homeless hound
Men neither miss nor mark."

The Ransom.

Tatiana Paulina Valenka!

I sat as still as if I had been stabbed. It was no wonder she had laughed when I asked her if she could ride, no wonder I had thought she moved like Pavlova. Paulette Brown, whom Dudley had brought to La Chance, was Tatiana Paulina Valenka, who had or had not stolen Van Ruyne's emeralds! But the blood sprang into my face at the knowledge, for—by all the holy souls and my dead mother's name—she was my dream girl too! And I believed in her.

All the same, I was thankful Marcia had flounced out of the room before Dudley let loose. It was no wonder she had thought she had seen Paulette Brown before. The wonder was that she had ever forgotten how she had seen her—dancing at the Hippodrome on her four horses as no girl ever had danced—or forgotten the story about her that she had said was "queer"! If Marcia's eyes had fallen on the signature mine were on now, I knew her first act would have been to write to Jimmy Van Ruyne; that even if she had only heard Dudley defending an ostensibly absent Valenka she would have written—for Marcia was no fool. Then and there I made up my mind that Marcia should never guess the whole of what she already half-guessed about Paulette Brown; there were ways I could stop that.

As for Dudley——But a sudden tide of respect for Dudley, in spite of his drink and all his queerness, rose flood-high in me. It had been Dudley, of course, who had got Paulette away,—for I could not think of her as Tatiana Paulina. How, I did not know; I knew he had not been one of the Houstons' week-end party; but he had done it somehow, and spirited Paulette out to La Chance. As for the rest, a fool could have told that he respected and believed in her. If it had been risky bringing Marcia out into the wilderness with her, it had been clever too, because it was so bold that Marcia had never suspected it. Even I never would have, if Macartney had not brought up Miss Valenka's name. I knew he had done it merely to get Dudley off his cracked idea that Billy Jones might have murdered Thompson, but I was suddenly nervous that Dudley's fool vehemence over a missing girl might have set Macartney on the track of things,—and heaven knows that, except he was a competent mine superintendent, I knew little enough how far it would be safe to trust Macartney. But suddenly one thing I did know flashed over me. Macartney and Marcia were a firm, or going to be; and I was instantly scared blue that he might turn around and see that name Paulette Brown had signed to her letter, lying plain under the living-room lamp! I knew I had to wake Paulette up to what she had done and shut up Dudley before he let out any more intimate details the public had never known, like Van Ruyne's bandaged wrist. I yawned and got up, with one hand on the table, and my forefinger pointing straight to that black signature of Tatiana Paulina Valenka that ought to have been Paulette Brown.

"I'm like Marcia, Miss Paulette; I'm going to bed unless you can turn off Dudley's eloquence. Oh, I'm so sorry—I'm afraid I've blotted your letter," I said. I tapped my finger on it soundlessly—and she looked down,—and saw!

I said once before that my dream girl had good nerves; she had iron ones. I need not have been afraid she would exclaim. She said quite naturally: "No, it's all right. And it wasn't a letter, anyhow. It was only something I wanted to make clear." She picked it up, folded it small, gathered up the bits of paper she had written on and torn up, and turned round to Dudley. "What are you talking about all this time?"

But if her glance warned him to hold his tongue, as heaven knows her mere presence would have warned me, Dudley was too roused to care. "I was talking about that liar, Van Ruyne," he said, glaring at Macartney.

"He may be a liar, all right," said Macartney rather unpleasantly. "Only, if that Valenka girl didn't steal his emeralds, Mr. Wilbraham, who did?"