Dick,"--Caroline refused to be diverted--"Nancy is merely
taking the easiest way out. Just getting married because she hasn't
the courage to go through any other way. She and Dick have hardly a
taste in common--they don't even read the same books."

"What difference does that make?"

"If you don't know I can't tell you. When you see somebody else in
danger of following the same course of action that you, yourself, are
pursuing," she added cryptically, "it puts a new face on your own
affairs."

"Oh! let's get out of here," Billy said, signaling for his check.

Caroline lived, for the summer while her family were away, in an
elaborate Madison Avenue boarding-house. The one big room into
which the entrance gave, dim and palatial in effect--at least in
the light of the single gas-jet turned economically low--seemed
scarcely to present a departure from its prototype, the great
living hall of the private residence for which the house was
originally designed. It was only on the second floor that the
character of the establishment became unmistakable. Billy took
Caroline's latchkey from her,--she usually opened the door for
herself--and let her quietly into the dim interior. Then he
stepped inside himself, and closed the door gently after him.
Being a man he entirely failed to note the drift of psychological
straws that indicated the sudden sharp turn of the wind, and the
presage of storm in the air. He was thinking only of the illusive,
desirable, maddening quality of the girl that walked beside him,
filled with inexplicable forebodings for a friend, whom he knew to
be invulnerable to misfortune. Certain phrases of Dick's were ringing
in his ears to the exclusion of all more immediate conversational
fragments.

"Cave-man stuff--that's the answer to you and Caroline.... This
watchful waiting's entirely the wrong idea...."

Billy made a great lunge toward the figure of his fiancee, and caught
her in his arms.

"I've never really kissed you before," he cried, "now I shan't let you
go."

She struggled in his arms, but he mastered her. He covered her cool
brow with kisses, her hands, the lovely curve of her neck where the
smooth hair turned upward, and at last--her lips.

"You're mine, my girl," he exulted, "and nothing, nothing, nothing
shall ever take you away from me now."

There was a click in the latch of the door through which they had just
entered. Another belated boarder was making his way into the domicile