id YOU know Seaver?" he demanded in obvious surprise.

"I used to SEE him--with Bertram."

"Oh! Well, he WAS one of them, unfortunately. But Bertram shipped him
years ago."

Billy gave a sudden radiant smile--but she changed the subject at once.

"And Mr. William still collects, I suppose," she observed.

"Jove! I should say he did! I've forgotten the latest; but he's a fine
fellow, too, like Bertram."

"And--Mr. Cyril?"

Calderwell frowned.

"That chap's a poser for me, Billy, and no mistake. I can't make him
out!"

"What's the matter?"

"I don't know. Probably I'm not 'tuned to his pitch.' Bertram told me
once that Cyril was very sensitively strung, and never responded until
a certain note was struck. Well, I haven't ever found that note, I
reckon."

Billy laughed.

"I never heard Bertram say that, but I think I know what he means; and
he's right, too. I begin to realize now what a jangling discord I must
have created when I tried to harmonize with him three years ago! But
what is he doing in his music?"

The other shrugged his shoulders.

"Same thing. Plays occasionally, and plays well, too; but he's so
erratic it's difficult to get him to do it. Everything must be just so,
you know--air, light, piano, and audience. He's got another book out,
I'm told--a profound treatise on somebody's something or other--musical,
of course."

"And he used to write music; doesn't he do that any more?"

"I believe so. I hear of it occasionally through musical friends of
mine. They even play it to me sometimes. But I can't stand for much of
it--his stuff--really, Billy."

"'Stuff' indeed! And why not?" An odd hostility showed in Billy's eyes.

Again Calderwell shrugged his shoulders.

"Don't ask me. I don't know. But they're always dead slow, somber
things, with the wail of a lost spirit shrieking through them."

"But I just love lost spirits that wail," avowed Billy, with more than a
shade of reproach in her voice.

Calderwell stared; then he shook his head.

"Not in mine, thank you;" he retorted whimsically. "I prefer my spirits
of a more sane and cheerful sort."

The girl laughed, but almost instantly she fell silent.

"I've been wondering," she began musingly, after a time, "why some one
of those three men does not--marry."

"You wouldn't wonder--if you knew them better," declared Calderwell.
"Now think. Let's begin at the top of the Strata--by the way, Bertram's
name for that establishment is migh