d forced himself
to hold it aloft and laugh a little. He might have spared himself all
that finesse, for she ran to him, clinging to his arm, laughing,
coaxing, pouting, begging him to give it to her--unread!

"Rob, you'll break my heart if you read that. Please not now--later
perhaps--some day I will explain; please, dear!"

"If the contents of this paper are sufficiently serious to break your
heart if I do read it, perhaps mine will be broken if I don't. So, as
a measure of self-preservation----" He put the piece of note paper
into his pocket. His face was white, his pulse was galloping like mad,
and yet he managed a rather ghastly smile into her face, upraised and
pleading.

"Face of a Botticello angel!" he thought, and steeled his heart
against her.

She sank into a chair half laughing and yet with an introverted
expression--"_recueillement d'esprit_," he thought to himself,
bitterly. Brushing her hair in passing lightly with his lips, he left
the room and presently the house. When she discovered that he had gone
without again seeing her, she flew to the telephone and held a long
incoherent talk with some one she not infrequently called "Ben, dear,"
to whom she confided certain undefined fears about her husband and her
future. A suggestion of a trip to Europe from the other end of the
telephone met with her unbounded gratitude and enthusiasm. After
urging haste, she left the colloquy almost her old smiling self, and
went to the library, where she did not continue the reading of
Boswell's "Life of Johnson," but went thence directly to the reception
room--into which Robert had peered before leaving the house--and,
stooping, she drew from under the lounge many sheets of paper, and was
soon lost in their perusal.

Robert had been forced to wait until he was settled on the train for
Washington before he found time to read the note whose possession had
caused Helen such perturbation. It was evidently the middle page of a
letter, a single sheet, note size, torn from a pad. The handwriting
was unquestionably masculine, entirely unfamiliar to Penn, hurried and
full of what Helen would have called--temperament.

After one glance, the blood rushed to his head, and his hot eyes
devoured again and again these words:

Since our interview yesterday, and in regard to that
irresistible scene of the blue stockings, I am not willing to
let it drop.

However, I should like to suggest abbreviation, and I fear