sible!"

She laid the collar beside other collars already ironed and took up
another; but he heard no answer.

"How did you know?" he asked. "From what?"

"From various things."

"What things?"

There was no reply.

"From things I did?"

She nodded, rather solemnly, and her face, what he could see of
it--seemed very serious. Pats was watching her intently, and exclaimed,
in surprise:

"That is very curious, for I kept it to myself!"

"Any woman would have known."

Pats leaned back, and frowned. A torturing thought possessed him. In an
anxious tone he said: "I hope I did not talk much when I had the fever."

As she made no reply he studied the back of her head for some responsive
motion. But none came.

"Did I?" he demanded.

"Yes."

A look of terror came into his face and his voice grew fainter as he
asked: "Did I talk about you?"

"Freely."

With trembling fingers he felt for his handkerchief and drew it across
his brow. "Did I say things that--that--I should be ashamed of?"

She nodded.

Pats sunk lower in his chair and closed his eyes. Judging from the lines
in his cadaverous face the last three minutes had added years to his
age.

"Would you mind telling me," he asked in a deferential voice, so low
that it barely reached her, "whether they were impertinent and
ungentlemanly--or--or--what?"

"Everything."

His lips were dry, and on his face came a look of anguish--of
unspeakable shame. There was a pause, broken only by the faint sound of
the flatiron.

"Then I really talked about you--at one time?"

She nodded.

"More than once?"

"For days together."

Pats closed his eyes in pain, and there was a silence. Then he opened
them: "Would you mind telling me some of the things I said?"

"I could not remember."

"Have you forgotten _all_?"

"No--but I prefer not repeating them."

On Pats's face the look of shame deepened. In a very low voice he said:
"Please remember that I was not myself."

"I make allowance for that."

"Excuse my asking, but if I was out of my head and irresponsible, what
could I have said to make you believe that I was--in love with you?"

"You protested so violently that you were not."

With unspeakable horror and humiliation Pats began to realize the awful
possibilities of that divulgence of his most secret thoughts. A cold
chill crept up his spine. He looked down at the floor, from fear that
she might glance in his direction and meet his eyes. Solomon