ction with the Fleming case, and a few more made no
difference.

Burton attended to the matter thoroughly. The one o'clock edition of an
afternoon paper contained a short and vivid scarlet account of Miss
Jane's disappearance. The evening editions were full, and while vague as
to the manner of her leaving, were minute as regarded her personal
appearance and characteristics.

To escape the threatened inundation of the morning paper men, I left the
office early, and at four o'clock Margery and I stepped from a hill car
into the park. She had been wearing a short, crepe-edged veil, but once
away from the gaze of the curious, she took it off. I was glad to see
she had lost the air of detachment she had worn for the last three days.

"Hold your shoulders well back," I directed, when we had found an
isolated path, "and take long breaths. Try breathing in while I count
ten."

She was very tractable--unusually so, I imagined, for her. We swung
along together for almost a half-hour, hardly talking. I was content
merely to be with her, and the sheer joy of the exercise after her
enforced confinement kept her silent. When she began to flag a little I
found a bench, and we sat down together. The bench had been lately
painted, and although it seemed dry enough, I spread my handkerchief for
her to sit on. Whereupon she called me "Sir Walter," and at the familiar
jest we laughed like a pair of children.

I had made the stipulation that, for this one time, her father's death
and her other troubles should be taboo, and we adhered to it
religiously. A robin in the path was industriously digging out a worm;
he had tackled a long one, and it was all he could manage. He took the
available end in his beak and hopped back with the expression of one who
sets his jaws and determines that this which should be, is to be. The
worm stretched into a pinkish and attenuated line, but it neither broke
nor gave.

"Horrid thing!" Margery said. "That is a disgraceful, heartless
exhibition."

"The robin is a parent," I reminded her. "It is precisely the same as
Fred, who twists, jerks, distorts and attenuates the English language in
his magazine work, in order to have bread and ice-cream and jelly cake
for his two blooming youngsters."

She had taken off her gloves, and sat with her hands loosely clasped in
her lap.

"I wish some one depended on me," she said pensively. "It's a terrible
thing to feel that it doesn't matter to any one--not vital