r?" I demanded. "You call her young. You saw her face, then?"

"I could forget it if I had," he said dryly. "As it happened, I didn't.
She was wrapped in a lot of floating thin stuff; gray, I guess? The room
was pretty dark, and I was jumping out of sleep. I don't know why she
seemed young unless it was the easy, light way she moved. By the time I
got what she was saying and sat up, she was gone."

"Gone?"

"She went out the door like a puff of smoke. I just saw a gray figure in
the doorway, where the hall lamp made it brighter than in the room. When
I came into the hall there wasn't a sign of anybody about. Nor
afterward, either!"

I considered briefly.

"I suppose I know what you are thinking, Vere. It is natural, but wrong.
The lady----"

"Mr. Locke," he checked me, "I'm not--thinking. I guess you're as good a
judge as I am about what goes on in this house. After the way you've
treated us from the first, I'd be pretty dull not to know you're as
choice of Phillida as I am; and she is all that matters."

"Who is?" demanded Phillida, returning. "Me? I haven't the least idea
what you are talking about, Drawls, but I think Cousin Roger matters a
great deal more than I do, just now. Perhaps now he is able to tell us
about this attack, and if he should have a doctor. I have noticed for
weeks how thin and grave he has been growing to be. If only he _would_
drink buttermilk!"

I looked into the candid, affectionate face she turned to me. From her,
I looked to her husband, whose New England steadiness had been tempered
by a sailor's service in the war and broadened by the test of his
experience in a city cabaret. A new thought cleaved through my
perplexities like an arrow shot from a far-off place.

"How much do you both trust me?" I slowly asked. "I do not mean trust my
character or my good intentions, but how much confidence have you in my
sanity and commonsense? Would you believe a thing because I told it to
you? Or would you say: 'This is outside usual experience. He is
deceiving us, or mad'?"

They regarded one another, smiling with an exquisite intimacy of
understanding.

"Don't you see yourself one little, little bit, Cousin?" she wondered at
me.

"Anything you say, goes all the way with us," Vere corroborated.

"Wait," I bade. "Drink your coffee while I think."

"Please drink yours, Cousin Roger, all fresh and hot."

I emptied the cup she urged upon me, then leaned my forehead in my hands
and tried