am not in love," I cried with bitter furey.

"Ah! Then it is not YOUR letter!"

"I wrote it."

"But to simulate a passion that does not exist--that is sackrilege. It
is----"

"Oh, stop talking," I cried, in a hunted tone. "I can't bear it. If you
are going to arrest me, get it over."

"I'd rather NOT arrest you, if we can find a way out. You look so young,
so new to Crime! Even your excuse for being here is so naive, that
I--won't you tell me why you wrote a love letter, if you are not in
love? And whom you sent it to? That's important, you see, as it bears
on the case. I intend," he said, "to be judgdicial, unimpassioned, and
quite fair."

"I wrote a love letter" I explained, feeling rather cheered, "but it was
not intended for any one, Do you see? It was just a love letter."

"Oh," he said. "Of course. It is often done. And after that?"

"Well, it had to go somewhere. At least I felt that way about it. So I
made up a name from some malted milk tablets----"

"Malted milk tablets!" he said, looking bewildered.

"Just as I was thinking up a name to send it to," I explained,
"Hannah--that's mother's maid, you know--brought in some hot milk and
some malted milk tablets, and I took the name from them."

"Look here," he said, "I'm unpredjudiced and quite calm, but isn't the
`mother's maid' rather piling it on?"

"Hannah is mother's maid, and she brought in the milk and the tablets,
I should think," I said, growing sarcastic, "that so far it is clear to
the dullest mind."

"Go on," he said, leaning back and closing his eyes. "You named the
letter for your mother's maid--I mean for the malted milk. Although you
have not yet stated the name you chose; I never heard of any one named
Milk, and as to the other, while I have known some rather thoroughly
malted people--however, let that go."

"Valentine's tablets," I said. "Of Course, you understand," I said,
bending forward, "there was no such Person. I made him up. The Harold
was made up too--Harold Valentine."

"I see. Not clearly, perhaps, but I have a gleam of intellagence."

"But, after all, there was such a person. That's clear, isn't it? And
now he considers that we are engaged, and--and he insists on marrying
me."

"That," he said, "is realy easy to understand. I don't blame him at all.
He is clearly a person of diszernment."

"Of course," I said bitterly, "you would be on HIS side. Every one is."

"But the point is this," he went on. "If you made hi