of a cigarette. Alice, admirable as she was, had
a fatal habit, he thought, of uttering bromides.

And she instantly regretted the remark. She knew that way of his of
snapping his cigarette case. Was that heavily be-flowered church a
dream and that great house in New York only part of a mirage? He seemed
to be the husband of some other girl, barely able to tolerate this
interruption. She had come determined to get the truth, however
terrible it might be. But it was very difficult, and he was obviously
not going to help her, and now that she saw him again, curiously worn
and nervous and petulant, she dreaded to ask for facts under which her
love was to be laid in waste.

"No wonder you like this place," she said, beating about the bush.

"I don't. I loathe it. The everlasting drumming of the sea puts me on
edge. It's as bad as living within sound of the elevated railway. And
at night the frogs on the land side of the house add to the racket and
make a row like a factory in full blast. I'd rather be condemned to a
hospital for incurables than live on a dune." He said all this with the
sort of hysteria that she had never noticed in him before. He was
indeed far from well. Hardly, in fact, recognizable. The suave,
imperturbable Gilbert, with the quiet air of patronage and the cool
irony of the polished man of the world,--what had become of him? Was it
possible that Joan had resisted him? She couldn't believe such a thing.

"Then why have you stayed so long?" she asked, with this new point of
view stirring hope.

"There was nowhere else to go to," he answered, refusing to meet her
eyes.

This was too absurd to let pass. "But nothing has happened to the house
at Newport, and the yacht's been lying in the East River since the
first of June and you said in your only letter that the two Japanese
servants have been at the cottage near Devon for weeks!"

"I'm sick of Newport with all its tuft-hunting women, and the yacht
doesn't call me. As for the cottage, I'm going there to-morrow,
possibly to-night."

Alice got up quickly and stood in front of him. There was a spot of
color on both her cheeks, and her hands were clasped together.
"Gilbert, let's both go there. Let's get away from all these people for
a time. I won't ask you any questions or try and pry into what's
happened to you. I'll be very quiet and help you to find yourself
again."

She had made another mistake. His sensitiveness gave him as many quills
as a p