o be horsewhipped. In the second, society tacitly sanctions and
supports that sheet. Your fashionable friends would call you a barbarian
and what is worse--a boob."

Farquaharson stood in a statuesque ire, and Wayne went philosophically
on. "Take the advice of a singularly wise bystander. At least treat it
with the contempt of silence until you've consulted the lady. Caning
people in New York is attended with some degree of notoriety and she
would have to share it. When you're in Rome, be as Romanesque as
possible."

"For my part," declared Stuart, "I like another version better. When
you're a Roman, be a Roman wherever you are."

Yet after some debate he took off his coat again and announced
cryptically, "After all, the one unpardonable idiocy is sectionalism of
code--damn it!"

He knew that Marian Holbury and her husband were near a break and that
the husband's jealousy looked his way. But, conscious of entire
rectitude, he gave no thought to appearances and treated the matter
lightly. But the Searchlight Investigation Bureau, whose employment had
been discontinued as not paying for itself, was now re-employed and
instructed to send a marked copy of the weekly to Miss Conscience
Williams. That copy was anonymously mailed, bearing a New York
postmark, and its sending was a puzzle which its recipient never solved.

Spring came, and Stuart, who had begun the writing of a novel, took a
small house in Westchester County, where he could work apart from the
city's excitement. Had he been cautious he would not have selected one
within two miles of the Holbury country house, yet the fact was that
Marian Holbury had discovered it and he had taken it because of its
quaintness. He had been there several weeks alone except for a man
servant when, one night, he sat under the lamp of his small living-room
with sheets of manuscript scattered about him. It was warm, with clouds
gathering for a storm, and the scent of blossoms came in through the
open doors and windows. There was no honeysuckle in the neighborhood,
but to his memory there drifted, clear and strong and sweet, the
fragrance of its heavy clusters.

He sat up straight, arrested by the poignancy of that echo from the
past. The typewriter keys fell silent and his eyes stared through the
open window, wide and full of suffering. He heard himself declaring with
boyhood's assurance, "They may take you to the North Pole and surround
you with regiments of soldiers--but in t