r noticeably firm for all their
curves--and the mad woman's mouth bewrayeth her inevitably under
scrutiny. Nor was she drugged into some passing vacancy of mind: her
whole atmosphere breathed a perfectly conscious control of her
movements, however misguided the event might prove them. Before this
conviction he hesitated slightly.

"You have another name, however," he said gently, "and what do you
mean by the sea? What sea?"

For it occurred to him that although her English was perfect, she
might be an utter stranger to the country, unthinkably abandoned, with
sufficient means to salve her betrayer's conscience.

"Is there more than one sea, then?" she inquired of him with interest.
"I thought there was only mine. It is a very large one with high
waves--and cold," she added as an after-thought.

Roger gasped. "You did not tell me your other name," he said.

"Josephine," she replied readily, pronouncing the name in the French
manner.

"But you have another still?"

"Yes. Dolores," she said, with an evidently accustomed Spanish accent.

"And the last name?" he persisted in despair, noting with some busy
corner of his mind that they were drifting down Fifth Avenue.

"That is all there are," she assured him, "surely three different
names are sufficient for one person? I do not use the last two--only
Margarita."

Roger squared his shoulders, took the banknotes from her unresisting
hand and gravely folded them into her bag before he spoke again.

"Listen to me, Miss Margarita," he said slowly and with exaggerated
articulation, as one speaks to a child, "what was your father's name?
What did the people in the town you live in call him?"

"I told you we lived by the sea--did you forget?" she answered, a
shade reprovingly. "There is no town at all. And there are no people.
We live alone."

"But your servants must have called him something?" he persisted.

"Hester called my father 'sir' and the boy cannot talk, of course,"
she said.

"Why not?"

"Because he is dumb. His name is Caliban," she added hastily, "and he
has no other, only that one."

"What is Hester's name?" Roger demanded doggedly.

"Hester Prynne," said Margarita Josephine Dolores, "and I have had
nothing to eat since the man with the shining buttons gave me meat
between bread a great many hours ago. I wish I might see another such
man. He might be willing to give me more. Will you look out and tell
me if you see one?"

"For heaven's sake," R