unsleeping that night, of Mr. Carville's
enigmatic saying that 'the things in books had always eluded him.' As
one with a certain interest in books, I had remembered his words. And it
seemed that, if I looked at life honestly, the things in books would
elude me too. The problem occupied me for days. I was aghast at my own
obtuseness, for I was unable to decide from Mrs. Carville's conduct what
her real attitude towards us might be. I did not know whether she were
wayward or not. I felt bitterly that such things could not happen in a
book, in a best seller.

And when the days passed, white shrouded, and we discussed the theories
we had made and demolished, I found to my astonishment that my friends
had taken up a remote position on the subject. They were extremely
doubtful about my story of the auto. Most likely, said they, it was a
late Store delivery van. I had imagined so much. They paid detestable
tribute to my imaginative powers. Married people are like this. With
disconcerting abruptness, they wheel round together and go off at some
incalculable tangent, serenely unconscious of any need for explanation.
They made matters worse by harping on my imagination. And they capped
all by declaring that I was a bad man and hoped I would keep my evil
thoughts to myself at the Festive Season.

It is here that Miss Fraenkel interposed, all unconsciously, and became
the cause of our presence at a most singular catastrophe, the collapse
of the aeroplane in the snow. For had we not gone out that night to
visit Miss Fraenkel and with her see the New Year safely born, we should
have had no vivid memory of that terrible descent, nor understood how
Fate had woven our neighbours' destinies, and how inexplicably she can
drive to ruin at the moment of victory.

My friends had been to New York during the day, I remember, visiting
friends in Lexington Avenue, and they mentioned at dinner a report in
the paper that Mr. Francis Lord was to fly from the Gottschalk grounds,
on the banks of Lake Champlain, to New York and give a demonstration of
the aeroplane over the city. New machines had come from England, hope
sprang eternal in the reporting breast, and events of staggering
scientific import were foreshadowed. Other experts were pessimistic.
They claimed their own apparatus was better than D'Aubigne's and so got
a little advertisement for themselves. Other experts again blamed the
administration in a vague way. An eminent actress was int