ay like music.

Hayden mechanically hung up the receiver, and then sat for a moment or
two staring rather stupidly before him. At last, he shook his head and
laughed in whimsical perplexity: "Who would ever have considered New York
the haunt and home of mystery?" he murmured. "Every day connects me with
a new one, and the charming ladies who seem involved in them apparently
take delight in leaving me completely in the air, suspended, like
Mahomet's coffin, 'twixt Heaven and earth, with the pleasing promise that
I shall hear from them again--and soon."

CHAPTER VII

An afternoon or two later, having perfected a little plan in his mind,
Hayden again called on his cousin to be informed that she was not at
home. Kitty, he reflected, was never at home when any one wanted to find
her. Therefore, with time on his hands, he turned into the Park and
decided to stroll there for an hour or so. It was an almost incredibly
mild afternoon for the season of the year, mild and soft and gray; the
leafless boughs of the trees upheld the black irregular network of their
twigs against the gray sky, with its faint, dull reflection of sunset
gold, and the twilight brooded in the mists on the edge of distance as if
it awaited the hour to send its gray veils floating over the face of the
earth.

Hayden walked slowly, and in this direction or that as his fancy
dictated. It was not an afternoon for violent exercise; but for loitering
and reverie. Presently, he looked up from his musings, to see, to his
infinite surprise and delight, Marcia Oldham approaching him down a
twilight vista with the gold behind her.

She, too, was influenced by the day and the hour, for she seemed to walk
in a dream, and came quite near him without seeing him. She was all in
black, and her furs, also black, were slipping from her shoulders, while
her muff dangled from a cord about her wrist. Hayden thought she looked a
little tired and certainly pale; but that might have been due to the
black hat and the lace veil she had thrown back from her face the better
to enjoy the air.

She came quite close to him before she saw him, and as she lifted her
eyes and met his she started slightly, a start of unmistakable amazement,
and as it seemed to him, although perhaps this was but the reflection of
his hopes, of pleasure.

"I began to fear that we were never going to meet again," he said after
they had exchanged the conventional greetings, and he had asked and h