"Here is my card and the telephone number of my office. If you decide
that this step is--too irregular, if perhaps we ought to talk with your
father first--"
"No! No!" cried Robin. "That would spoil everything!"
Down in the street Cornelius Allendyce waved off a persistent taxi
driver, deciding that he needed the vent of exercise to bring him back
to earth. And as he hurried along he felt a curious elation, as though
for the first time he enjoyed a zest in living. As a lawyer his life had
been necessarily cut-and-dried; there had been little room for
adventuring. And now, in a brief half-hour, he had let himself into the
wildest sort of conspiracy. (He stopped suddenly and mopped his
forehead.) He was planning to deliberately deceive Madame Forsyth, to
steal a young and very unusual girl from her parent--and, to assume the
guardianship of this same runaway. Where would it all end?
But in that half-hour just past something must have happened to the
little man's conscience for even after the startling summing up, he
laughed and walked on with a step lighter than before.
* * * * *
Back on the fifth floor of the old house in Patchin Place Robin leaned
over the table writing a letter.
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