ssed. And her explanation scarcely explained.

"I--I was with the Lassleys in New York, you know; I went to the steamer
to see them off. Mr. Lassley showed me his telegram to you after he had
written it."

They had come to the little coffees, and the other members of Miss
Craigmiles's party had risen and gone rearward to the sleeping-car.
Ballard, more mystified than he had been at the Boston moment when
Lassley's wire had found him, was still too considerate to make his
companion a reluctant source of further information. Moreover, Mr.
Lester Wingfield was weighing upon him more insistently than the
mysteries. In times past Miss Craigmiles had made him the target for
certain little arrows of confidence: he gave her an opportunity to do it
again.

"Tell me about Mr. Wingfield," he suggested. "Is he truly Jack Forsyth's
successor?"

"How can you question it?" she retorted gayly. "Some time--not here or
now--I will tell you all about it."

"'Some time,'" he repeated. "Is it always going to be 'some time'? You
have been calling me your friend for a good while, but there has always
been a closed door beyond which you have never let me penetrate. And it
is not my fault, as you intimated a few minutes ago. Why is it? Is it
because I'm only one of many? Or is it your attitude toward all men?"

She was knotting her veil and her eyes were downcast when she answered
him.

"A closed door? There is, indeed, my dear friend: two hands, one dead
and one still living, closed it for us. It may be opened some time"--the
phrase persisted, and she could not get away from it--"and then you will
be sorry. Let us go back to the sleeping-car. I want you to meet the
others." Then with a quick return to mockery: "Only I suppose you will
not care to meet Mr. Wingfield?"

He tried to match her mood; he was always trying to keep up with her
kaleidoscopic changes of front.

"Try me, and see," he laughed. "I guess I can stand it, if he can."

And a few minutes later he had been presented to the other members of
the sight-seeing party; had taken Mrs. Van Bryck's warm fat hand of
welcome and Dosia's cool one, and was successfully getting himself
contradicted at every other breath by the florid-faced old campaigner,
who, having been a major of engineers, was contentiously critical of
young civilians who had taken their B.S. degree otherwhere than at West
Point.

III

THE REVERIE OF A BACHELOR

It was shortly after midnight when