of his mission that
easily. The doctor had denied anybody access to Hilmer; therefore,
unless it was very urgent...

"I want to see about a partnership arrangement," Fred explained,
finally.

Helen stirred in her seat. "You mean that you want him to go in with
us?... What's the reason? He's satisfied."

Fred drew himself up. "But I'm not!" he answered, decidedly.

She shrugged. "We've had one experience...we'd better think twice
before we make another break."

"_I've_ thought it all over," he replied, pointedly.

She colored and flashed a sharp glance at him. "I spoke to him about
the premiums this morning... He tells me he ordered them paid." "Yes
... direct to the companies... That's one of the reasons that made me
decide to get things on a better working basis... I'm tired of being
an object of charity."

She smiled coldly. Well, Hilmer simply wouldn't receive anyone now,
and she herself didn't see the reason for haste. He ended by telling
her the reason ... there was no other way out of the situation.

"Oh," she drawled, when he had finished, "so getting rid of Brauer was
_too_ easy, after all!" She made no other comment, but he read her
scornful glance. "Any fool would have guessed that!" was what it
implied.

Still, even with the fact of Brauer's craftiness exposed, she could
not be persuaded that the proposition was quite that urgent.

"You don't?" he inquired, with growing irritation. "Well, you've
forgotten that check for some six hundred-odd dollars I wrote for
Brauer the other day... I presume you know it's a felony to give out
checks when there aren't sufficient funds on deposit."

She stared at him. "That's absurd!" she exclaimed. "Brauer wouldn't go
that far!"

He quite agreed there, but he didn't say so. Instead, he insisted that
anything was possible. They argued the matter scornfully. In the end
he won.

"Well, I'll try," she announced, coldly. "I'll do my best... But I'm
sure he won't see you."

She left the room with an indefinable air of boredom. He rose from his
seat and began to pace up and down. The whole situation had a
suggestion of unreality. In pleading with Helen for a chance to talk
to Hilmer he had a sense of crossing swords with some intangible and
sinister shadow; his wife seemed suddenly to have arrived at a state
toward which she had been traveling all these last uncertain weeks ...
fading, fading from the frame of his existence. Was he growing
hypersensitive or mere