A March day, sunny and cloudless, with fresh, bracing winds. Green
things pushed up from the soil; an eternal something was happening to
the tips of the tree branches; an eternal something was happening in
young hearts. A robin shook the dust of travel from his wings and bathed
publicly in a park basin.

Here and there under the ten thousand roofs of the great city poets were
busy with inkpots, trying to say an old thing in a new way. Woe to the
pinched soul that did not expand this day, for it was spring. Expansion!
Nature--perhaps she was relenting a little, perhaps she saw that
humanity was sliding down the scale, withering, and a bit of extra
sunshine would serve to check the descension and breed a little
optimism.

Cutty's study. The sunlight, thrown westward, turned windows and roofs
and towers into incomparable bijoux. The double reflection cast a white
light into the room, lifting out the blue and old-rose tints of the
Ispahan rug.

Cutty shifted the chrysoprase, irresolutely for him. A dozen problems,
and it was mighty hard to decide which to tackle first. Principally
there was Kitty. He had not seen her in four days, deeming it advisable
for her not to call for the present. The Bolshevik agent who had
followed him from the banker's might decide, without the aid of some
connecting episode, that he had wasted his time.

It did not matter that Kitty herself was no longer watched and followed
from her home to the office, from the office home. Was Karlov afraid
or had he some new trick up his sleeve? It was not possible that he
had given up Hawksley. He was probably planning an attack from some
unexpected angle. To be sure that Karlov would not find reason to
associate him with Kitty, Cutty had remained indoors during the daytime
and gone forth at night in his dungarees.