you have known me for
years. What is the color of my hair?"

"Why, it is blond."

"Nothing of the kind. It is auburn. If you can not tell mine, how will
you tell hers?"

"I shall probably run after every red-headed woman in Europe till I find
her," humorously.

"If you can keep out of jail long enough."

"I shall at any rate remember her voice."

"That is better. Our ears never deceive half so often as our eyes."

"Her face is not scarred, is it?"

"Scarred!" indignantly. "She is as beautiful as a Raphael, as lovely as
a Bouguereau. If I were a man I should gladly journey round the world
for the sight of her."

"I am willing, even anxious."

"I should fall in love with her."

"I believe I have."

"And I should marry her, too."

"Even that."

"Come, Mr. Hillard; I am just fooling. You are too sensible a man to
fall in love with a shadow, a mask. Your fancy has been trapped, that is
all. One does not fall in love that way."

"You ought to know," with a sidelong glance at Sandford.

As her glance followed his, hers grew warm and kindly. Sandford, by
chance meeting the look, smiled back across the room. This little
by-play filled Hillard with a sense of envy and loneliness. At
three-and-thirty a bachelor realizes that there is something else in
life besides business and travel.

"It is quite useless to ask who she is?" he inquired of his hostess.

"Quite useless."

"She is married?"

"Certainly I have not said so."

He flicked the ash from his cigarette. What was the use of trying to
trap a woman into saying what she did not propose to say?

"Have you those letters?"

"One of them I'll show you."

"Why not the other?"

"It would be wasting time. It merely relates to your adventure. She
sailed the day after you dined with her."

"That accounts for the shutters. The police and the caretaker were
bribed."

"I suspect they were."

"If I were a vain man, and you know I am not, I might ask you if she
spoke well of me in this letter. Understand, I am not inquiring."

"But you put the question as adroitly as a woman. We are sure of vanity
always. Yes, she spoke of you. She found you to be an agreeable
gentleman. But," with gentle malice, "she did not say that she wished
she had met you years ago, under more favorable circumstances, or that
she liked your eyes, which are really fine ones."

He had to join in her laughter.

"Come, give me the death-stroke and have done with it. Tell me wha