ow him
slightly."

"I didn't say anything about the general," said Mildred.

Stanley smiled apologetically. "It wouldn't do for you to go about
with me--not when my missus is looking for grounds for divorce."

"Why not?" said Mildred. "So's my husband."

"You busted up, too? Now, that's what _I_ call jolly." And he cast a
puzzled glance up at the abstracted general. "I say, Mildred, this is
no place for either of us, is it?"

"I'd rather be where there's food," confessed she.

"You think it's a joke, but I assure you-- Oh, you WERE joking--about
YOUR bust-up?"

"No, indeed," she assured him. "I walked out a while ago, and I
couldn't go back if I would--and I don't think I would if I could."

"That's foolish. Better go back," advised he. He was preparing
hastily to decamp from so perilous a neighborhood. "One marriage is
about like another, once you get through the surface. I'm sure you'll
be better off than--back with your stepfather."

"I've no intention of going to his house," she declared. "Oh, there's
your brother. I forgot."

"So had I forgotten him. I'll not go there, either. In fact, I've not
thought where I'll go."

"You seem to have done mighty little thinking before you took a very
serious step for a woman." He was uneasily eying the rigid, abstracted
little figure a story up across the way.

"Those things aren't a question of thinking," said she absently. "I
never thought in my life--don't think I could if I tried. But when the
time came I--I walked out." She came back to herself, laughed. "I
don't understand why I'm telling you all this, especially as you're mad
with fright and wild to get away. Well, good-by, Stanley."

He lifted his hat. "Good-by. We'll meet when we can do so without my
getting a scandal on you." He walked a few paces, turned, and came
back. "By the way, I'm sailing on the Deutschland. I thought you'd
like to know--so that you and I wouldn't by any chance cross on the
same boat."

"Thanks," said she dryly.

"What's the matter?" asked he, arrested, despite his anxiety to be
gone, by the sad, scornful look in her eyes.

"Nothing. Why?"

"You had such a--such a queer look."

"Really? Good-by."

In fact, she had thought--had hoped for the sake of her liking for
him--that he had come back to make the glaringly omitted offer of help
that should have come from any human being learning that a fellow being
was in the precarious position in which she