ght enough toward the end but the lightness is not
far from a very real desperation, all the same.

"Meaning by which?" Oliver queries uneasily.

"Meaning by which that some of my address for the next two-three weeks
will be care of Mrs. Rose Severance, 4th floor, the Nineveh, Riverside
Drive, New York--you know the place, I showed it to you once from a
bus-top when we were talking the mysterious lady over. And that I don't
think Mr. Theodore Billett will graduate _cum laude_ from Columbia Law
School. In fact, I think it very possible that Mr. Billett will join
Mr. Oliver Crowe, the celebrated unpublished novelist on a pilgrimage
to Paris for to cure their broken hearts and go to the devil like
gentlemen. Eh, Ollie?"

"Well, that's all right for _me_," says Oliver combatively. "And I
always imagined we'd find each other in hell. I'm not trying to be
inhospitable with my own pet red-hot gridiron, but all the same--"

"Now, Crowe, for Pete's sake, it's five o'clock in the morning and I'm
catching the 7.12--"

And Oliver is too sleepy to argue the point. Besides he knows quite well
that any arguments he can use will only drive Ted, in his present
state of mind, a good deal farther and faster along the road he has so
dramatically picked out for himself. So, between trying to think of
some means of putting either sense or the fear of God into Elinor Piper,
whatever Ted may say about it, and wondering how the latter would take
a suggestion to come over to Melgrove for a while instead of starting an
immoral existence with that beautiful but possessive friend of Louise's,
he drops off to sleep.

XXXIII

Oliver had depended on Ted's noisy habits in dressing and packing to
wake him and give them a chance to talk before Ted left--but when he
woke it was to hear a respectful servantly voice saying "Ten o'clock,
sir!" and his first look around the room showed him that Ted's bed was
empty and Ted's things were gone. There was a scribbled note propped up
against the mirror, though.

"Dear Ollie:

"So long--and thanks for both good advice
and sympathy. The latter helped if the former
didn't. Drop me a message at 252A as soon
as you decide on this French proposition. I'm
serious about it. TED."

By the time he had read this through, Oliver began to feel rather
genuinely alarmed.

He could not believe that the whole affair between Ted and Elinor Piper
had gone so utterly wrong as the n