"I—I don't care!" she said breathlessly. "I can't let——"

"Crack!" But the car stuck again.

"I will call the police!" she cried.

"The papers may make fun of you."

"Was it for me you were afraid? Oh, Mr. Vanderdynk! What do I care for ridicule compared to—to——"

The car had sunk so far in the shaft now that she had to kneel and put her head close to the floor to see him.

"I will only be a minute at the telephone," she said. "Keep up courage; I am thinking of you every moment."

"W-will you let me say one word?" he stammered.

"Oh, what? Be quick, I beg you."

"It's only goodbye—in case the thing drops. May I say it?"

"Y-yes—yes! But say it quickly."

"And if it doesn't drop after all, you won't be angry at what I'm going to say?"

"N-no. Oh, for Heaven's sake, hurry!"

"Then—you are the sweetest woman in the world!... Goodbye—Sacharissa— dear."

She sprang up, dazed, and at the same moment a terrific crackling and splintering resounded from the shaft, and the car sank out of sight.

Faint, she swayed for a second against the balustrade, then turned and ran downstairs, ears strained for the sickening crash from below.

There was no crash, no thud. As she reached the drawing-room landing, to her amazement a normally-lighted elevator slid slowly down, came to a stop, and the automatic grilles opened quietly.

As Killian Van K. Vanderdynk crept forth from the elevator, Sacharissa's nerves gave way; his, also, seemed to disintegrate; and they stood for some moments mutually supporting each other, during which interval unaccustomed tears fell from the gray eyes, and unaccustomed words, breathed brokenly, reassured her; and, altogether unaccustomed to such things, they presently found themselves seated in a distant corner of the drawing-room, still endeavoring to reassure each other with interclasped hands.

They said nothing so persistently that the wordless minutes throbbed into hours; through the windows the red west sent a glowing tentacle into the room, searching the gloom for them.

It fell, warm, across her upturned throat, in the half light.

For her head lay back on his shoulder; his head was bent down, lips pressed to the white hands crushed fragrantly between his own.

A star came out and looked at them with astonishment; in a little while the sky was thronged with little stars, all looking through the window at them.

Her maid knocked, backed out hastily and fled, distracted. Then Ferdinand arrived with a plumber.

Later the butler came. They did not notice him until he ventured to cough and announce dinner.

The interruptions were very annoying, particularly when she was summoned to the telephone to speak to her father.

"What is it, dad?" she asked impatiently.

"Are you all right?"

"Oh, yes," she answered, carelessly; "we are all right, dad. Goodbye."

"We? Who the devil is 'We'?"

"Mr. Vanderdynk and I. We're taking my maid and coming down to Tuxedo this evening together. I'm in a hurry now."

"What!!!"

"Oh, it's all right, dad. Here, Killian, please explain things to my father."

Vanderdynk released her hand and picked up the receiver as though it had been a live wire.

"Is that you, Mr. Carr?" he began—stopped short, and stood listening, rigid, bewildered, turning redder and redder as her father's fluency increased. Then, without a word, he hooked up the receiver.

"Is it all right?" she asked calmly. "Was dad—vivacious?"

The young man said: "I'd rather go back into that elevator than go to Tuxedo.... But—I'm going."

"So am I," said Bushwyck Carr's daughter, dropping both hands on her lover's shoulders.... "Was he really very—vivid?"

"Very."

The telephone again rang furiously.

He bent his head; she lifted her face and he kissed her.

After a while the racket of the telephone annoyed them, and they slowly moved away out of hearing.



VIII

"IN HEAVEN AND EARTH"

The Green Mouse Stirs

"I've been waiting half an hour for you," observed Smith, dryly, as Beekman Brown appeared at the subway station, suitcase in hand.

"It was a most extraordinary thing that detained me," said Brown, laughing, and edging his way into the ticket line behind his friend where he could talk to him across his shoulder; "I was just leaving the office, Smithy, when Snuyder came in with a card."

"Oh, all right—of course, if——"

"No, it was not a client; I must be honest with you."

"Then you had a terrible cheek to keep me here waiting."

"It was a girl," said Beekman Brown.

Smith cast a cold glance back at him over his left shoulder.

"What kind of a girl?"

"A most extraordinary girl. She came on—on a matter——"

"Was it business or a touch?"

"Not exactly business."

"Ornamental girl?" demanded Smith.

"Yes—exceedingly; but it wasn't that——

"Oh, it was not that which kept you talking to her half an hour while I've sat suffocating in this accursed subway!"

"No, Smith; her undeniably attractive features and her—ah—winning personality had nothing whatever to do with it. Buy the tickets and I'll tell you all about it."

Smith bought two tickets. A north bound train roared into the station. The young men stepped aboard, seated themselves, depositing their suitcases at their feet.

"Now what about that winning-looker who really didn't interest you?" suggested Smith in tones made slightly acid by memory of his half hour waiting.

"Smith, it was a most unusual episode. I was just leaving the office to keep my appointment with you when Snuyder came in with a card——"

"You've said that already."

"But I didn't tell you what was on that card, did I?"

"I can guess."

"No, you can't. Her name was not on the card. She was not an agent; she had nothing to sell; she didn't want a position; she didn't ask for a subscription to anything. And what do you suppose was on that card?"

"Well, what was on the card, for the love of Mike?" snapped Smith. "I'll tell you. The card seemed to be an ordinary visiting card; but down in one corner was a tiny and beautifully drawn picture of a green mouse."

"A—what?"

"A mouse."

"G-green?"

"Pea green.... Come, now, Smith, if you were just leaving your office and your clerk should come in, looking rather puzzled and silly, and should hand you a card with nothing on it but a little green mouse, wouldn't it give you pause?"

"I suppose so."

Brown removed his straw hat, touched his handsome head with his handkerchief, and continued:

"I said to Snuyder: 'What the mischief is this?' He said: 'It's for you. And there's an exceedingly pretty girl outside who expects you to receive her for a few moments.' I said: 'But what has this card with a green mouse on it got to do with that girl or with me?' Snuyder said he didn't know and that I'd better ask her. So I looked at my watch and I thought of you——"

"Yes, you did."

"I tell you I did. Then I looked at the card with the green mouse on it.... And I want to ask you frankly, Smith, what would you have done?"

"Oh, what you did, I suppose," replied Smith, wearily. "Go on."

"I'm going. She entered——"

"She was tall and squeenly; you probably forgot that," observed Smith in his most objectionable manner.

"Probably not; she was of medium height, as a detail of external interest. But, although rather unusually attractive in a merely superficial and physical sense, it was instantly evident from her speech and bearing, that, in her, intellect dominated; her mind, Smithy, reigned serene, unsullied, triumphant over matter."

Smith looked up in amazement, but Brown, a reminiscent smile lighting his face, went on:

"She had a very winsome manner—a way of speaking—so prettily in earnest, so grave. And she looked squarely at me all the time——"

"So you contributed to the Home for Unemployed Patagonians."

"Would you mind shutting up?" asked Brown.

"No."

"Then try to listen respectfully. She began by explaining the significance of that pea-green mouse on the card. It seems, Smith, that there is a scientific society called The Green Mouse, composed of a few people who have determined to apply, practically, certain theories which they believe have commercial value."

"Was she," inquired Smith with misleading politeness, "what is known as an 'astrologist'?"

"She was not. She is the president, I believe, of The Green Mouse Society. She explained to me that it has been indisputably proven that the earth is not only enveloped by those invisible electric currents which are now used instead of wires to carry telegraphic messages, but that this world of ours is also belted by countless psychic currents which go whirling round the earth——"

"What kind of currents?"

"Psychic."

"Which circle the earth?"

"Exactly. If you want to send a wireless message you hitch on to a current, don't you?—or you tap it—or something. Now, they have discovered that each one of these numberless millions of psychic currents passes through two, living, human entities of opposite sex; that, for example, all you have got to do to communicate with the person who is on the same psychical current that you are, is to attune your subconscious self to a given intensity and pitch, and it will be like communication by telephone, no matter how far apart you are."

"Brown!"

"What?"

"Did she go to your office to tell you that sort of—of—information?"

"Partly. She was perfectly charming about it. She explained to me that all nature is divided into predestined pairs, and that somewhere, at some time, either here on earth or in some of the various future existences, this predestined pair is certain to meet and complete the universal scheme as it has been planned. Do you understand, Smithy?"

Smith sat silent and reflective for a while, then:

"You say that her theory is that everybody owns one of those psychic currents?"

"Yes."

"I am on a private psychic current whirling around this globe?"

"Sure."

"And some—ah—young girl is at the other end?"

"Sure thing."

"Then if I could only get hold of my end of the wire I could—ah—call her up?"

"I believe that's the idea."

"And—she's for muh?"

"So they say."

"Is—is there any way to get a look at her first?"

"You'd have to take her anyway, sometime."

"But suppose I didn't like her?"

The two young men sat laughing for a few moments, then Brown went on:

"You see, Smith, my interview with her was such a curious episode that about all I did was to listen to what she was saying, so I don't know how details are worked out. She explained to me that The Green Mouse Society has just been formed, not only for the purpose of psychical research, but for applying practically and using commercially the discovery of the psychic currents. That's what The Green Mouse is trying to do: form itself into a company and issue stocks and bonds——"

"What?"

"Certainly. It sounds like a madman's dream at first, but when you come to look into it—for instance, think of the millions of clients such a company would have. As example, a young man, ready for marriage, goes to The Green Mouse and pays a fee. The Green Mouse sorts out, identifies, and intercepts the young man's own particular current, hitches his subconscious self to it, and zip!—he's at one end of an invisible telephone and the only girl on earth is at the other.... What's the matter with their making a quick date for an introduction?"

Smith said slowly: "Do you mean to tell me that any sane person came to you in your office with a proposition to take stock in such an enterprise?"

"She did not even suggest it."

"What did she want, then?"

"She wanted," said Brown, "a perfectly normal, unimaginative business man who would volunteer to permit The Green Mouse Society to sort out his psychic current, attach him to it, and see what would happen."

"She wants to experiment on you?"

"So I understand."

"And—you're not going to let her, are you?"

"Why not?"

"Because it's—it's idiotic!" said Smith, warmly. "I don't believe in such things—you don't, either—nobody does—but, all the same, you can't be perfectly sure in these days what devilish sort of game you might be up against."

Brown smiled. "I told her, very politely, that I found it quite impossible to believe in such things; and she was awfully nice about it, and said it didn't matter what I believed. It seems that my name was chosen by chance—they opened the Telephone Directory at random and she, blindfolded, made a pencil mark on the margin opposite one of the names on the page. It happened to be my name. That's all."

"Wouldn't let her do it!" said Smith, seriously.

"Why not, as long as there's absolutely nothing in it? Besides, if it pleases her to have a try why shouldn't she? Besides, I haven't the slightest intention or desire to woo or wed anybody, and I'd like to see anybody make me."

"Do you mean to say that you told her to go ahead?"

"Certainly," said Brown serenely. "And she thanked me very prettily. She's well bred—exceptionally."

"Oh! Then what did you do?"

"We talked a little while."

"About what?"

"Well, for instance, I mentioned that curiously-baffling sensation which comes over everybody at times—the sudden conviction that everything that you say and do has been said and done by you before—somewhere. Do you understand?"

"Oh, yes."

"And she smiled and said that such sensations were merely echoes from the invisible psychic wire, and that repetitions from some previous incarnation were not unusual, particularly when the other person through whom the psychic current passed, was near by."

"You mean to say that when a fellow has that queer feeling that it has all happened before, the—the predestined girl is somewhere in your neighborhood?"

"That is what my pretty informant told me."

"Who," asked Smith, "is this pretty informant?"

"She asked permission to withhold her name."

"Didn't she ask you to subscribe?"

"No; she merely asked for the use of my name as reference for future clients if The Green Mouse Society was successful in my case."

"What did you say?"

Brown laughed. "I said that if any individual or group of individuals could induce me, within a year, to fall in love with and pay court to any living specimen of human woman I'd cheerfully admit it from the house- tops and take pleasure in recommending The Green Mouse to everybody I knew who yet remained unmarried."

They both laughed.

"What rot we've been talking," observed Smith, rising and picking up his suitcase. "Here's our station, and we'd better hustle or we'll lose the boat. I wouldn't miss that week-end party for the world!"

"Neither would I," said Beekman Brown.



IX

A CROSS-TOWN CAR

Concerning the Sudden Madness of One Brown

As the two young fellows, carrying their suitcases, emerged from the subway at Times Square into the midsummer glare and racket of Broadway and Forty-second Street, Brown suddenly halted, pressed his hand to his forehead, gazed earnestly up at the sky as though trying to recollect how to fly, then abruptly gripped Smith's left arm just above the elbow and squeezed it, causing the latter gentleman exquisite discomfort.

"Here! Stop it!" protested Smith, wriggling with annoyance.

Brown only gazed at him and then at the sky.

"Stop it!" repeated Smith, astonished. "Why do you pinch me and then look at the sky? Is—is a monoplane attempting to alight on me? What is the matter with you, anyway?"

"That peculiar consciousness," said Brown, dreamily, "is creeping over me. Don't move—don't speak—don't interrupt me, Smith."

"Let go of me!" retorted Smith.

"Hush! Wait! It's certainly creeping over me."

"What's creeping over you?"

"You know what I mean. I am experiencing that strange feeling that all— er—all this—has happened before."

"All what?—confound it!"

"All this! My standing, on a hot summer day, in the infernal din of some great city; and—and I seem to recall it vividly—after a fashion— the blazing sun, the stifling odor of the pavements; I seem to remember that very hackman over there sponging the nose of his horse—even that pushcart piled up with peaches! Smith! What is this maddeningly elusive memory that haunts me—haunts me with the peculiar idea that it has all occurred before?... Do you know what I mean?"

"I've just admitted to you that everybody has that sort of fidget occasionally, and there's no reason to stand on your hindlegs about it. Come on or we'll miss our train."

But Beekman Brown remained stock still, his youthful and attractive features puckered in a futile effort to seize the evanescent memories that came swarming—gnatlike memories that teased and distracted.

"It's as if the entire circumstances were strangely familiar," he said; "as though everything that you and I do and say had once before been done and said by us under precisely similar conditions—somewhere—sometime."

"We'll miss that boat at the foot of Forty-second Street," cut in Smith impatiently. "And if we miss the boat we lose our train."

Brown gazed skyward.

"I never felt this feeling so strongly in all my life," he muttered; "it's—it's astonishing. Why, Smith, I knew you were going to say that."

"Say what?" demanded Smith.

"That we would miss the boat and the train. Isn't it funny?"

"Oh, very. I'll say it again sometime if it amuses you; but, meanwhile, as we're going to that week-end at the Carringtons we'd better get into a taxi and hustle for the foot of West Forty-second Street. Is there anything very funny in that?"

"I knew that, too. I knew you'd say we must take a taxi!" insisted Brown, astonished at his own "clairvoyance."

"Now, look here," retorted Smith, thoroughly vexed; "up to five minutes ago you were reasonable. What the devil's the matter with you, Beekman Brown?"

"James Vanderdynk Smith, I don't know. Good Heavens! I knew you were going to say that to me, and that I was going to answer that way!"

"Are you coming or are you going to talk foolish on this broiling curbstone the rest of the afternoon?" inquired Smith, fiercely.

"Jim, I tell you that everything we've done and said in the last five minutes we have done and said before—somewhere—perhaps on some other planet; perhaps centuries ago when you and I were Romans and wore togas——"

"Confound it! What do I care," shouted Smith, "whether we were Romans and wore togas? We are due this century at a house party on this planet. They expect us on this train. Are you coming? If not—kindly relax that crablike clutch on my elbow before partial paralysis ensues."

"Smith, wait! I tell you this is somehow becoming strangely portentous. I've got the funniest sensation that something is going to happen to me."

"It will," said Smith, dangerously, "if you don't let go my elbow."

But Beekman Brown, a prey to increasing excitement, clung to his friend.

"Wait just one moment, Jim; something remarkable is likely to occur! I—I never before felt this way—so strongly—in all my life. Something extraordinary is certainly about to happen to me."

"It has happened," said his friend, coldly; "you've gone dippy. Also, we've lost that train. Do you understand?"

"I knew we would. Isn't that curious? I—I believe I can almost tell you what else is going to happen to us."

"I'll tell you," hissed Smith; "it's an ambulance for yours and ding- dong to the funny-house! What are you trying to do now?" With real misgiving, for Brown, balanced on the edge of the gutter, began waving his arms in a birdlike way as though about to launch himself into aerial flight across Forty-second Street.

"The car!" he exclaimed excitedly, "the cherry-colored cross-town car! Where is it? Do you see it anywhere, Smith?"

"What? What do you mean? There's no cross-town car in sight. Brown, don't act like that! Don't be foolish! What on earth——"

"It's coming! There's a car coming!" cried Brown.

"Do you think you're a racing runabout and I'm a curve?"

Brown waved him away impatiently.

"I tell you that something most astonishing is going to occur—in a cherry-colored tram car.... And somehow there'll be some reason for me to get into it."

"Into what?"

"Into that cherry-colored car, because—because—there'll be a wicker basket in it—somebody holding a wicker basket—and there'll be—there'll be—a—a—white summer gown—and a big white hat——"

Smith stared at his friend in grief and amazement. Brown stood balancing himself on the gutter's edge, pale, rapt, uttering incoherent prophecy concerning the advent of a car not yet visible anywhere in the immediate metropolitan vista.

"Old man," began Smith with emotion, "I think you had better come very quietly somewhere with me. I—I want to show you something pretty and nice."

"Hark!" exclaimed Brown.

"Sure, I'll hark for you," said Smith, soothingly, "or I'll bark for you if you like, or anything if you'll just come quietly."

"The cherry-colored car!" cried Brown, laboring under tremendous emotion. "Look, Smithy! That is the car!"

"Sure, it is! I see it, old man. They run 'em every five minutes. What the devil is there to astonish anybody about a cross-town cruiser with a red water line?"

"Look!" insisted Brown, now almost beside himself. "The wicker basket! The summer gown! Exactly as I foretold it! The big straw hat!—the—the girl!"

And shoving Smith violently away he galloped after the cherry-colored car, caught it, swung himself aboard, and sank triumphant and breathless into the transverse seat behind that occupied by a wicker basket, a filmy summer frock, a big, white straw hat, and—a girl—the most amazingly pretty girl he had ever laid eyes on. After him, headlong, like a distracted chicken, rushed Smith and alighted beside him, panting, menacing.

"Wha'—dyeh—board—this—car—for!" he gasped, sliding fiercely up beside Brown. "Get off or I'll drag you off!"

But Brown only shook his head with an infatuated smile.

"Is it that girl?" said Smith, incensed. "Are you a—a Broadway Don Juan, or are you a respectable lawyer with a glimmering sense of common decency and an intention to keep a social engagement at the Carringtons' to-day?"

And Smith drew out his timepiece and flourished it furiously under Brown's handsome and sun-tanned nose.

But Brown only slid along the seat away from him, saying:

"Don't bother me, Jim; this is too momentous a crisis in my life to have a well-intentioned but intellectually dwarfed friend butting into me and running about under foot."

"Intellectually d-d—do you mean me?" asked Smith, unable to believe his ears. "Do you?"

"Yes, I do! Because a miracle suddenly happens to me on Forty-second Street, and you, with your mind of a stockbroker, unable to appreciate it, come clattering and clamoring after me about a house party—a common- place, every-day, social appointment, when I have a full-blown miracle on my hands!"

"What miracle?" faltered Smith, stupefied.

"What miracle? Haven't I been telling you that I've been having that queer sense that all this has happened before? Didn't I suddenly begin— as though compelled by some unseen power—to foretell things? Didn't I prophesy the coming of this cross-town car? Didn't I even name its color before it came into sight? Didn't I warn you that I'd probably get into it? Didn't I reveal to you that a big straw hat and a pretty summer gown——"

"Confound it!" almost shouted Smith, "There are about five thousand cherry-colored cross-town cars in this town. There are about five million white hats and dresses in this borough. There are five billion girls wearing 'em——!" "Yes; but the wicker basket" breathed Brown. "How do you account for that?... And, anyway, you annoy me, Smith. Why don't you get out of the car and go somewhere?"

"I want to know where you are going before I knock your head off."

"I don't know," replied Brown, serenely.

"Are you actually attempting to follow that girl?" whispered Smith, horrified.

"Yes.... It sounds low, doesn't it? But it really isn't. It is something I can't explain—you couldn't understand even if I tried to enlighten you. The sentiment I harbor is too lofty for some to comprehend, too vague, too pure, too ethereal for——"

"I'm as lofty and ethereal as you are!" retorted Smith, hotly. "And I know a—an ethereal Lothario when I see him, too!"

"I'm not—though it looks like it—and I forgive you, Smithy, for losing your temper and using such language."

"Oh, you do?" said Smith, grinning with rage.

"Yes," nodded Brown, kindly. "I forgive you, but don't call me that again. You mean well, but I'm going to find out at last what all this maddening, tantalizing, unexplained and mysterious feeling that it all has occurred before really is. I'm going to trace it to its source; I'm going to compare notes with this highly intelligent girl."

"You're going to speak to her?"

"I am. I must. How else can I compare data."

"I hope she'll call the police. If she doesn't I will."

"Don't worry. She's part of this strange situation. She'll comprehend as soon as I begin to explain. She is intelligent; you only have to look at her to understand that."

Smith choking with impotent fury, nevertheless ventured a swift glance. Her undeniable beauty only exasperated him. "To think—to think," he burst out, "that a modest, decent, law-loving business man like me should suddenly awake to find his boyhood friend had turned into a godless votary of Venus!"

"I'm not a votary of Venus!" retorted Brown, turning pink. "I'll punch you if you say it again. I'm as decent and respectable a business man as you are! And my grammar is better. And, thank Heaven! I've intellect enough to recognize a miracle when it happens to me.... Do you think I am capable of harboring any sentiments that might bring the blush of coquetry to the cheek of modesty? Do you?"

"Well—well, I don't know what you're up to!" Smith raised his voice in bewilderment and despair. "I don't know what possesses you to act this way. People don't experience miracles in New York cross-town cars. The wildest stretch of imagination could only make a coincidence out of this. There are trillions of girls in cross-town cars dressed just like this one."

"But the basket!"

"Another coincidence. There are quadrillions of wicker baskets."

"Not," said Brown, "with the contents of this one."

"Why not?"

Smith instinctively turned to look at the basket balanced daintily on the girl's knees.

He strove to penetrate its wicker exterior with concentrated gaze. He could see nothing but wicker.

"Well," he began angrily, "what is in that basket? And how do you know it—you lunatic?"

"Will you believe me if I tell you?"

"If you can offer any corroborative evidence——"

"Well, then—there's a cat in that basket."

"A—what?"

"A cat."

"How do you know?"

"I don't know how I know, but there's a big, gray cat in that basket."

"Why a gray one?"

"I can't tell, but it is gray, and it has six toes on every foot."

Smith truly felt that he was now being trifled with.

"Brown," he said, trying to speak civilly, "if anybody in the five boroughs had come to me with affidavits and told me yesterday how you were going to behave this morning——"

His voice, rising unconsciously as the realization of his outrageous wrongs dawned upon him, rang out above the rattle and grinding of the car, and the girl turned abruptly and looked straight at him and then at Brown.

The pure, fearless beauty of the gaze, the violet eyes widening a little in surprise, silenced both young men.

She inspected Brown for an instant, then turned serenely to her calm contemplation of the crowded street once more. Yet her dainty, close-set ears looked as though they were listening.

The young men gazed at one another.

"That girl is well bred," said Smith in a low, agitated voice. "You—you wouldn't think of venturing to speak to her!"

"I'm obliged to, I tell you! This all happened before. I recognize everything as it occurs.... Even to your making a general nuisance of yourself."

Smith straightened up.

"I'm going to push you forcibly from this car. Do you remember that incident?"



"No," said Brown with conviction, "that incident did not happen. You only threatened to do it. I remember now."

In spite of himself Smith felt a slight chill creep up over his neck and inconvenience his spine.

He said, deeply agitated: "What a terrible position for me to be in—with a friend suddenly gone mad in the streets of New York and running after a basket containing what he believes to be a cat. A Cat! Good——"

Brown gripped his arm. "Watch it!" he breathed.

The lid of the basket tilted a little, between lid and rim a soft, furry, six-toed gray paw was thrust out. Then a plaintive voice said, "Meow-w!"



X

THE LID OFF

An Alliance, Offensive, Defensive, and Back-Fensive

Smith, petrified, looked blankly at the paw.

For a while he remained stupidly incapable of speech or movement, then, as though arousing from a bad dream:

"What are you going to do, anyway?" he asked with an effort. "This car is bound to stop sometime, I suppose, and—and then what?"

"I don't know what I'm going to do. Whatever I do will be the thing that ought to happen to me, to that cat and to that girl—that is the thing which is destined to happen. That's all I know about it."

His friend passed an unsteady hand across his brow.

"This whole proceeding is becoming a nightmare," he said unsteadily. "Am I awake? Is this Forty-second Street? Hold up some fingers, Brown, and let me guess how many you hold up, and if I guess wrong I'm home in bed asleep and the whole thing is off."

Beekman Brown patted his friend on the shoulder.

"You take a cab, Smithy, and go somewhere. And if I don't come go on alone to the Carringtons'.... You don't mind going on and fixing things up with the Carringtons, do you?"

"Brown, do you believe that The Green Mouse Society has got hold of you? Do you?"

"I don't know and don't care.... Smith, I ask you plainly, did you ever before see such a perfectly beautiful girl as that one is?"

"Beekman, do you believe anything queer is going to result? You don't suppose she has anything to do with this extraordinary freak of yours?"

"Anything to do with it? How?"

"I mean," he sank his voice to hoarser depths, "how do you know but that this girl, who pretends to pay no attention to us, might be a—a—one of those clever, professional mesmerists who force you to follow 'em, and get you into their power, and exhibit you, and make you eat raw potatoes and tallow candles and tacks before an audience."

He peeped furtively at Brown, who did not appear uneasy.

"All I'm afraid of," added Smith, sullenly, "is that you'll get yourself into vaudeville or the patrol wagon."

He waited, but Brown made no reply.

"Oh, very well," he said, coldly. "I'll take a cab back to the boat."

No observation from Brown.

"So, good-by, old fellow"—with some emotion.

"Good-by," said Beekman Brown, absently.

In fact, he did not even notice when his thoroughly offended partner left the car, so intent was he in following the subtly thrilling train of thought which tantalized him, mocked him, led him nowhere, yet always lured him to fresh endeavor of memory. Where had all this occurred before? When? What was going to happen next—happen inexorably, as it had once happened, or as it once should have happened, in some dim, bygone age when he and that basket and that cat and this same hauntingly lovely girl existed together on earth—or perhaps upon some planet, swimming far out beyond the ken of men with telescopes?

He looked at the girl, strove to consider her impersonally, for her youthful beauty began to disturb him. Then cold doubt crept in; something of the monstrosity of the proceeding chilled his enthusiasm for occult research. Should he speak to her?

Certainly, it was a dreadful thing to do—an offense the enormity of which was utterly inexcusable except under the stress of a purely impersonal and scientific necessity for investigating a mental phase of humanity which had always thrilled him with a curiosity most profound.

He folded his arms and began to review in cold blood the circumstances which had led to his present situation in a cross-town car. Number one, and he held up one finger:

As it comes, at times, to every normal human, the odd idea had come to him that what he was saying and doing as he emerged from the subway at Times Square was what he had, sometime, somewhere, said and done before under similar circumstances. That was the beginning.

Number two, and he gravely held up a second finger:

Always before when this idea had come to bother him it had faded after a moment or two, leaving him merely uneasy and dissatisfied.

This time it persisted—intruding, annoying, exasperating him in his efforts to remember things which he could not recollect.

Number three, and he held up a third finger:

He had begun to remember! As soon as he or Smith said or did anything he recollected having said or done it sometime, somewhere, or recollected that he ought to have.

Number four—four fingers in air, stiff, determined digits:

He had not only, by a violent concentration of his memory, succeeded in recognizing the things said and done as having been said and done before, but suddenly he became aware that he was going to be able to foretell, vaguely, certain incidents that were yet to occur—like the prophesied advent of the cherry-colored car and the hat, gown, and wicker basket.

He now had four fingers in the air; he examined them seriously, and then stuck up the fifth.

"Here I am," he thought, "awake, perfectly sane, absolutely respectable. Why should a foolish terror of convention prevent me from asking that girl whether she knows anything which might throw some light on this most interesting mental phenomenon?... I'll do it."

The girl turned her head slightly; speech and the politely perfunctory smile froze on his lips.

She held up one finger; Brown's heart leaped. Was that some cabalistic sign which he ought to recognize? But she was merely signaling the conductor, who promptly pulled the bell and lifted her basket for her when she got off.

She thanked him; Brown heard her, and the crystalline voice began to ring in little bell-like echoes all through his ears, stirring endless little mysteries of memory.

Brown also got off; his legs struck up a walk of their own volition, carrying him across the street, hoisting him into a north-bound Lexington Avenue car, and landing him in a seat behind the one where she had installed herself and her wicker basket.

She seemed to be having some difficulty with the wicker basket; beseeching six-toed paws were thrust out persistently; soft meows pleaded for the right of liberty and pursuit of feline happiness. Several passengers smiled.

Trouble increased as the car whizzed northward; the meows became wilder; mad scrambles agitated the basket; the lid bobbed and creaked; the girl turned a vivid pink and, bending close over the basket, attempted to soothe its enervated inmate.

In the forties she managed to control the situation; in the fifties a frantic rush from within burst a string that fastened the basket lid, but the girl held it down with energy.

In the sixties a tempest broke loose in the basket; harrowing yowls pierced the atmosphere; the girl, crimson with embarrassment and distress, signaled the conductor at Sixty-fourth Street and descended, clinging valiantly to a basket which apparently contained a pack of firecrackers in process of explosion.

A classical heroine in dire distress invariably exclaims aloud: "Will no one aid me?" Brown, whose automatic legs had compelled him to follow, instinctively awaited some similar appeal.

It came unexpectedly; the kicking basket escaped from her arms, the lid burst open, and an extraordinarily large, healthy and indignant cat flew out, tail as big as a duster, and fled east on Sixty-fourth Street.

The girl in the summer gown and white straw hat ran after the cat. Brown's legs ran, too.

There was, and is, between the house on the northeast corner of Sixty- fourth Street and Lexington Avenue and the next house on Sixty-fourth, an open space guarded by an iron railing; through this the cat darted, fur on end, and, with a flying leap, took to the back fences.

"Oh!" gasped the girl.

Then Brown's legs did an extraordinary thing—they began to scramble and kick and shin up the iron railing, hoisting Brown over; and Brown's voice, pleasant, calm, reassuring, was busy, too: "If you will look out for my suitcase I think I can recover your cat.... It will give me great pleasure to recover your cat. I shall be very glad to have, the opportunity of recovering—puff—puff—your—puff—puff—c-cat!" And he dropped inside the iron railing and paused to recover his breath.

The girl came up to the railing and gazed anxiously through at the corner of the only back fence she could perceive.

"What a perfectly dreadful thing to happen!" she said in a voice not very steady. "It is exceedingly nice of you to help me catch Clarence. He is quite beside himself, poor lamb! You see, he has never before been in the city. I—I shall be distressed beyond m-measure if he is lost."

"He went over those fences," said Brown, breathing faster. "I think I'd better go after him."

"Oh—would you mind? I'd be so very grateful. It seems so much to ask of you."

"I'll do it," said Brown, firmly. "Every boy in New York has climbed back fences, and I'm only thirty."

"It is most kind of you; but—but I don't know whether you could possibly get him to come to you. Clarence is timid with strangers."

Brown had already clambered on to the wooden fence. He balanced himself there, astride. Whitewash liberally decorated coat and trousers.

"I see him," he said.

"W-what is he doing?"

"Squatting on a trellis three back yards away." And Brown lifted a blandishing voice: "Here, Clarence—Clarence—Clarence! Here, kitty— kitty—kitty! Good pussy! Nice Clarence!"

"Does he come?" inquired the girl, peering wistfully through the railing.

"He does not," said Brown. "Perhaps you had better call."

"Here, puss—puss—puss—puss!" she began gently in that fascinating, crystalline voice which seemed to set tiny silvery chimes ringing in Brown's ears: "Here, Clarence, darling—Betty's own little kitty-cat!"

"If he doesn't come to that," thought Brown, "he is a brute." And aloud: "If you could only let him see you; he sits there blinking at me."

"Do you think he'd come if he saw me?"

"Who wouldn't?" thought Brown, and answered, calmly: "I think so.... Of course, you couldn't get up here."

"I could.... But I'd better not.... Besides, I live only a few houses away—Number 161—and I could go through into the back yard."

"But you'd better not attempt to climb the fence. Have one of the servants do it; we'll get the cat between us then and corner him."

"There are no servants in the house. It's closed for the summer—all boarded up!"

"Then how can you get in?"

"I have a key to the basement.... Shall I?"

"And climb up on the fence?"

"Yes—if I must—if it's necessary to save Clarence.... Shall I?"

"Why can't I shoo him into your yard."

"He doesn't know our yard. He's a country cat; he's never stayed in town. I was taking him with me to Oyster Bay.... I came down from a week-end at Stockbridge, where some relatives kept Clarence for us while we were abroad during the winter.... I meant to stop and get some things in the house on my way back to Oyster Bay.... Isn't it a perfectly wretched situation?... We—the entire family—adore Clarence—and—I-I'm so anxious——"

Her fascinating underlip trembled, but she controlled it.

"I'll get that cat if it takes a month!" said Brown. Then he flushed; he had not meant to speak so warmly.

The girl flushed too. I am so grateful.... But how——"

"Wait," said Brown; and, addressing Clarence in a softly alluring voice, he began cautiously to crawl along the fences toward that unresponsive animal. Presently he desisted, partly on account of a conspiracy engaged in between his trousers and a rusty nail. The girl was now beyond range of his vision around the corner.

"Miss—ah—Miss—er—er—Betty!" he called.

"Yes!"

"Clarence has retreated over another back yard."

"How horrid!"

"How far down do you live?"

She named the number of doors, anxiously adding: "Is Clarence farther down the block? Oh, please, be careful. Please, don't drive him past our yard. If you will wait I—I'll let myself into the house and—I'll manage to get up on the fence."

"You'll ruin your gown."

"I don't care about my gown."

"These fences are the limit! Full of spikes and nails.... Will you be careful?"

"Yes, very."

"The nails are rusty. I—I am h-horribly afraid of lockjaw."

"Then don't remain there an instant."

"I mean—I'm afraid of it for you."

There was a silence; they couldn't see each other. Brown's heart was beating fast.

"It is very generous of you to—think of me," came her voice, lower but very friendly.

"I ca-can't avoid it," he stammered, and wanted to kick himself for what he had blurted out.

Another pause—longer this time. And then:

"I am going to enter my house and climb up on the fence.... Would you mind waiting a moment?"

"I will wait here," said Beekman Brown, "until I see you." He added to himself: "I'm going mad rapidly and I know it and don't care.... What— a—girl!"

While he waited, legs swinging, astride the back fence, he examined his injuries—thoughtfully touched the triangular tear in his trousers, inspected minor sartorial and corporeal lacerations, set his hat firmly upon his head, and gazed across the monotony of the back-yard fences at Clarence. The cat eyed him disrespectfully, paws tucked under, tail curled up against his well-fed flank—disillusioned, disgusted, unapproachable.

Presently, through the palings of a back yard on Sixty-fifth Street, Brown saw a small boy, evidently the progeny of some caretaker, regarding him intently.

"Say, mister," he began as soon as noticed, "you have tore your pants on a nail."

"Thanks," said Brown, coldly; "will you be good enough to mind your business?"

"I thought I'd tell you," said the small boy, delightedly aware that the information displeased Brown. "They're tore awful, too. That's what you get for playin' onto back fences. Y'orter be ashamed."

Brown feigned unconsciousness and folded his arms with dignity; but the next moment he straightened up, quivering.

"You young devil!" he said; "if you pull that slingshot again I'll come over there and destroy you!"

At the same moment above the fence line down the block a white straw hat appeared; then a youthful face becomingly flushed; then two dainty, gloved hands grasping the top of the fence.

"I am here," she called across to him.

The small boy, who had climbed to the top of his fence, immediately joined the conversation:

"Your girl's a winner, mister," he observed, critically.

"Are you going to keep quiet?" demanded Brown, starting across the fence.

"Sure," said the small boy, carelessly.

And, settling down on his lofty perch of observation, he began singing:

"Lum' me an' the woild is mi-on."

The girl's cheeks became pinker; she looked at the small boy appealingly.

"Little boy," she said, "if you'll run away somewhere I'll give you ten cents."

"No," said the terror, "I want to see him an' you catch that cat."

"I'll tell you what I'll do," suggested Brown, inspired. "I'll give you a dollar if you'll help us catch the cat."

"You're on!" said the boy, briskly. "What'll I do? Touch her up with this bean-shooter?"

"No; put that thing into your pocket!" exclaimed Brown, sharply. "Now climb across to Sixty-fourth Street and stand by that iron railing so that the cat can't bolt out into the street, and," he added, wrapping a dollar bill around a rusty nail and tossing it across the fence, "here's what's coming to you."

The small boy scrambled over nimbly, ran squirrel-like across the transverse fence, dipped, swarmed over the iron railing and stood on guard.

"Say, mister," he said, "if the cat starts this way you and your girl start a hollerin' like——"

"All right," interrupted Brown, and turned toward the vision of loveliness and distress which was now standing on the top of her own back fence holding fast to a wistaria trellis and flattering Clarence with low and honeyed appeals.

The cat, however, was either too stupid or too confused to respond; he gazed blankly at his mistress, and when Brown began furtively edging his way toward him Clarence arose, stood a second in alert indecision, then began to back away.

"We've got him between us!" called out Brown. "If you'll stand ready to seize him when I drive him——"

There was a wild scurry, a rush, a leap, frantic clawing for foothold.

"Now, Miss Betty! Quick!" cried Brown. "Don't let him pass you."

She spread her skirts, but the shameless Clarence rushed headlong between the most delicately ornamental pair of ankles in Manhattan.

"Oh-h!" cried the girl in soft despair, and made a futile clutch; but she could not arrest the flight of Clarence, she merely upset him, turning him for an instant into a furry pinwheel, whirling through mid-air, landing in her yard, rebounding like a rubber ball, and disappearing, with one flying leap, into a narrow opening in the basement masonry.

"Where is he?" asked Brown, precariously balanced on the next fence.

"Do you know," she said, "this is becoming positively ghastly. He's bolted into our cellar."

"Why, that's all right, isn't it?" asked Brown. "All you have to do is to go inside, descend to the cellar, and light the gas."

"There's no gas."

"You have electric light?"

"Yes, but it's turned off at the main office. The house is closed for the summer, you know."

Brown, balancing cautiously, walked the intervening fence like an amateur on a tightrope.

Her pretty hat was a trifle on one side; her cheeks brilliant with excitement and anxiety. Utterly oblivious of herself and of appearances in her increasing solicitude for the adored Clarence, she sat the fence, cross saddle, balancing with one hand and pointing with the other to the barred ventilator into which Clarence had darted.

A wisp of sunny hair blew across her crimson cheek; slender, active, excitedly unconscious of self, she seemed like some eager, adorable little gamin perched there, intent on mischief.

"If you'll drop into our yard," she said, "and place that soap box against the ventilator, Clarence can't get out that way!"

It was done before she finished the request. She disengaged herself from the fencetop, swung over, hung an instant, and dropped into a soft flower bed.

Breathing fast, disheveled, they confronted one another on the grass. His blue suit of serge was smeared with whitewash; her gown was a sight. She felt for her hat instinctively, repinned it at hazard, looked at her gloves, and began to realize what she had done.

"I—I couldn't help it," she faltered; "I couldn't leave Clarence in a city of five m-million strangers—all alone—terrified out of his senses— could I? I had rather—rather be thought—anything than be c-cruel to a helpless animal."

Brown dared not trust himself to answer. She was too beautiful and his emotion was too deep. So he bent over and attempted to dust his garments with the flat of his hand.

"I am so sorry," she said in a low voice. "Are your clothes quite ruined?"

"Oh, I don't mind," he protested happily, "I really don't mind a bit. If you'll only let me help you corner that infern—that unfortunate cat I shall be perfectly happy."

She said, with heightened color: "It is exceedingly nice of you to say so.... I—I don't quite know—what do you think we had better do?"

"Suppose," he said, "you go into the basement, unlock the cellar door and call. He can't bolt this way."

She nodded and entered the house. A few moments later he heard her calling, so persuasively that it was all he could do not to run to her, and why on earth that cat didn't he never could understand.



XI

BETTY

In Which the Remorseless and Inexorable Results of Psychical Research Are Revealed to the Very Young

At intervals for the next ten minutes her fresh, sweet, fascinating voice came to him where he stood in the yard; then he heard it growing fainter, more distant, receding; then silence.

Listening, he suddenly heard a far, rushing sound from subterranean depths—like a load of coal being put in—then a frightened cry.

He sprang into the basement, ran through laundry and kitchen. The cellar door swung wide open above the stairs which ran down into darkness; and as he halted to listen Clarence dashed up out of the depths, scuttled around the stairs and fled upward into the silent regions above.

"Betty!" he cried, forgetting in his alarm the lesser conventions, "where are you?"

"Oh, dear—oh, dear!" she wailed. "I am in such a dreadful plight. Could you help me, please?"

"Are you hurt?" he asked. Fright made his voice almost inaudible. He struck a match with shaking fingers and ran down the cellar stairs.

"Betty! Where are you?"

"Oh, I am here—in the coal."

"What?"

"I—I can't seem to get out; I stepped into the coal pit in the dark and it all—all slid with me and over me and I'm in it up to the shoulders."

Another match flamed; he saw a stump of a candle, seized it, lighted it, and, holding it aloft, gazed down upon the most heart rending spectacle he had ever witnessed.

The next instant he grasped a shovel and leaped to the rescue. She was quite calm about it; the situation was too awful, the future too hopeless for mere tears. What had happened contained all the dignified elements of a catastrophe. They both realized it, and when, madly shoveling, he at last succeeded in releasing her she leaned her full weight on his own, breathing rapidly, and suffered him to support and guide her through the flame-shot darkness to the culinary regions above.

Here she sank down on a chair for one moment in utter collapse. Then she looked up, resolutely steadying her voice:

"Could anything on earth more awful have happened to a girl?" she asked, lips quivering in spite of her. She stretched out what had once been a pair of white gloves, she looked down at what had been a delicate summer gown of white. "How," she asked with terrible calmness, "am I to get to Oyster Bay?"

He dropped on to a kitchen chair opposite her, clasping his coal-stained hands between his knees, utterly incapable of speech.

She looked at her shoes—once snowy white; with a shudder she stripped the soiled gloves from elbow to wrist and flung them aside. Her arms and hands formed a starling contrast to the remainder of the ensemble.

"What," she asked, "am I to do?"

"The thing to do," he said, "is to telephone to your family at Oyster Bay."

"The telephone has been disconnected. So has the water—we can't even w-wash our hands!" she faltered.

He said: "I can go out and telephone to your family to send a maid with some clothes for you—if you don't mind being left alone in an empty house for a little while."

"No, I don't; but," she gazed uncertainly at the black opening of the cellar, "but, please, don't be gone very long, will you?"

He promised fervidly. She gave him the number and her family's name, and he left by the basement door.

He was gone a long time, during which, for a while, she paced the floor, unaffectedly wringing her hands and contemplating herself and her garments in the laundry looking-glass.

At intervals she tried to turn on the water, hoping for a few drops at least; at intervals she sat down to wait for him; then, the inaction becoming unendurable, musing goaded her into motion, and she ascended to the floor above, groping through the dimness in futile search for Clarence. She heard him somewhere in obscurity, scurrying under furniture at her approach, evidently too thoroughly demoralized to recognize her voice. So, after a while, she gave it up and wandered down to the pantry, instinct leading her, for she was hungry and thirsty; but she knew there could be nothing eatable in a house closed for the summer.

She lifted the pantry window and opened the blinds; noon sunshine flooded the place, and she began opening cupboards and refrigerators, growing hungrier every moment.

Then her eyes fell upon dozens of bottles of Apollinaris, and with a little cry of delight she knelt down, gathered up all she could carry, and ran upstairs to the bathroom adjoining her own bedchamber.

"At least," she said to herself, "I can cleanse myself of this dreadful coal!" and in a few moments she was reveling, elbow deep, in a marble basin brimming with Apollinaris.

As the stain of the coal disappeared she remembered a rose-colored morning gown reposing in her bedroom clothespress; and she found more than that there—rose stockings and slippers and a fragrant pile of exquisitely fine and more intimate garments, so tempting in their freshness that she hurried with them into the dressing room; then began to make rapid journeys up and downstairs, carrying dozens of quarts of Apollinaris to the big porcelain tub, into which she emptied them, talking happily to herself all the time.

"If he returns I can talk to him over the banisters!... He's a nice boy.... Such a funny boy not to remember me.... And I've thought of him quite often.... I wonder if I've time for just one, delicious plunge?" She listened; ran to the front windows and looked out through the blinds. He was nowhere in sight.

Ten minutes later, delightfully refreshed, she stood regarding herself in her lovely rose-tinted morning gown, patting her bright hair into discipline with slim, deft fingers, a half-smile on her lips, lids closing a trifle over the pensive violet eyes.

"Now," she said aloud, "I'll talk to him over the banisters when he returns; it's a little ungracious, I suppose, after all he has done, but it's more conventional.... And I'll sit here and read until they send somebody from Sandcrest with a gown I can travel in.... And then we'll catch Clarence and call a cab——"

A distant tinkling from the area bell interrupted her.

"Oh, dear," she exclaimed, "I quite forgot that I had to let him in!"

Another tinkle. She cast a hurried and doubtful glance over her attire. It was designed for the intimacy of her boudoir.

"I—I couldn't talk to him out of the window! I've been shocking enough as it is!" she thought; and, finger tips on the banisters, she ran down the three stairs and appeared at the basement grille, breathless, radiant, forgetting, as usual, her self-consciousness in thinking of him, a habit of this somewhat harebrained and headlong girl which had its root in perfect health of body and wholesomeness of mind.

"I found some clothes—not the sort I can go out in!" she said, laughing at his astonishment, as she unlocked the grille. "So, please, overlook my attire; I was so full of coal dust! and I found sufficient Apollinaris for my necessities.... What did they say at Sandcrest?"

He said very soberly: "We've got to discuss this situation. Perhaps I had better come in for a few minutes—if you don't mind."

"No, I don't mind.... Shall we sit in the drying room?" leading the way. "Now tell me what is the matter? You rather frighten me, you know. Is—is anything wrong at Sandcrest?"

"No, I suppose not." He touched his flushed face with his handkerchief; "I couldn't get Oyster Bay on the 'phone."

"W-why not?"

"The wires are out of commission as far as Huntington; there's no use—I tried everything! Telegraph and telephone wires were knocked out in this morning's electric storm, it seems."

She gazed at him, hands folded on her knee, left leg crossed over, foot swinging.

"This," she said calmly, "is becoming serious. Will you tell me what I am to do?"

"Haven't you anything to travel in?"

"Not one solitary rag."

"Then—you'll have to stay here to-night and send for some of your friends—you surely know somebody who is still in town, don't you?"

"I really don't. This is the middle of July. I don't know a woman in town."

He was silent.

"Besides," she said, "we have no light, no water, nothing to eat in the house, no telephone to order anything——"

He said: "I foresaw that you would probably be obliged to remain here, so when I left the telephone office I took the liberty of calling a taxi and visiting the electric light people, the telephone people and the nearest plumber. It seems he is your own plumber—Quinn, I believe his name is; and he's coming in half an hour to turn on the water."

"Did you think of doing all that?" she asked, astonished.

"Oh, that wasn't anything. And I ventured to telephone the Plaza to serve luncheon and dinner here for you——"

"You did?"

"And I wired to Dooley's Agency to send you a maid for to-day——"

"That was perfectly splendid of you!"

"They promised to send one as soon as possible.... And I think that may be the plumber now," as a tinkle came from the area bell.

It was not the plumber; it was waiters bearing baskets full of silver, china, table linen, ice, fruits, confections, cut flowers, and, in warmers, a most delectable luncheon.

Four impressive individuals commanded by a butler formed the processional, filing solemnly up the basement stairs to the dining room, where they instantly began to lay the table with dexterous celerity.

In the drying room below Betty and Beekman Brown stood confronting each other.

"I suppose," began Brown with an effort, "that I had better go now."

Betty said thoughtfully: "I suppose you must."

"Unless," continued Brown, "you think I had better remain—somewhere on the premises—until your maid arrives."

"That might be safer," said Betty, more thoughtfully.

"Your maid will probably be here in a few minutes."

"Probably," said Betty, head bent, slim, ringless fingers busy with the sparkling drop that glimmered pendant from her neckchain.

Silence—the ironing board between them—she standing, bright head lowered, worrying the jewel with childish fingers; he following every movement, fascinated, spellbound.

After a moment, without looking up: "You have been very, very nice to me— in the nicest possible way," she said.... "I am not going to forget it easily—even if I might wish to."

"I can never forget you!... I d-don't want to."

The sparkling pendant escaped her fingers; she picked it up again and spoke as though gravely addressing it:

"Some day somewhere," she said, looking at the jewel, "perhaps chance— the hazard of life—may bring us to—togeth—to acquaintance—a more formal acquaintance than this.... I hope so. This has been a little— irregular, and perhaps you had better not wait for my maid.... I hope we may meet—sometime."

"I hope so, too," he managed to say, with so little fervor and so successful an imitation of her politely detached interest in convention that she raised her eyes. They dropped immediately, because his quiet voice and speech scarcely conformed to the uncontrolled protest in his eyes.

For a moment she stood, passing the golden links through her white fingers like a young novice with a rosary. Steps on the stairs disturbed them; the recessional had begun; four solemn persons filed out the area gate. At the same moment, suave and respectful, her butler pro tem. presented himself at the doorway:

"Luncheon is served, madam."

"Thank you." She looked uncertainly at Brown, hesitated, flushed a trifle.

"I will stay here and admit the plumber and then—then—I'll g-go," he said with a heartbroken smile.

"I suppose you took the opportunity to lunch when you went out?" she said. Her inflection made it a question.

Without answering he stepped back to allow her to pass. She moved forward, turned, undecided.

"Have you lunched?"

"Please don't feel that you ought to ask me," he began, and checked himself as the vivid pink deepened in her cheeks. Then she freed herself of embarrassment with a little laugh.

"Considering," she said, "that we have been chasing cats on the back fences together and that, subsequently, you dug me out of the coal in my own cellar, I can't believe it is very dreadful if I ask you to luncheon with me.... Is it?"

"It is ador—it is," he corrected himself firmly, "exceedingly civil of you to ask me!"

"Then—will you?" almost timidly.

"I will. I shall not pretend any more. I'd rather lunch with you than be President of this Republic."

The butler pro tem. seated her.

"You see," she said, "a place had already been laid for you." And with the faintest trace of malice in her voice: "Perhaps your butler had his orders to lay two covers. Had he?"

"From me?" he protested, reddening.

"You don't suspect me, do you?" she asked, adorably mischievous. Then glancing over the masses of flowers in the center and at the corners of the lace cloth: "This is deliciously pretty. But you are either dreadfully and habitually extravagant or you believe I am. Which is it?"

"I think both are true," he said, laughing.

And a little while later when he returned from the basement after admitting Mr. Quinn, the plumber:

"Do you know that this is a most heavenly luncheon?" she said, greeting his return with delightfully fearless eyes. "Such Astrakan caviar! Such salad! Everything I care for most. And how on earth you guessed I can't imagine.... I'm beginning to think you are rather wonderful."

They lifted the long, slender glasses of iced Ceylon tea and regarded one another over the frosty rims—a long, curious glance from her; a straight gaze from him, which she decided not to sustain too long.

Later, when she gave the signal, they rose as though they had often dined together, and moved leisurely out through the dim, shrouded drawing-rooms where, in the golden dusk, the odor of camphor hung.

She had taken a great cluster of dewy Bride's roses from the centerpiece, and as she walked forward, sedately youthful, beside him, her fresh, young face brooded over the fragrance of the massed petals.

"Sweet—how sweet!" she murmured to herself, and as they reached the end of the vista she half turned to face him, dreamily, listless, confident.

They looked at one another, she with chin brushing the roses.

"The strangest of all," she said, "is that it seems all right—and—and we know that it is all quite wrong.... Had you better go?"

"Unless I ought to wait and make sure your maid does not fail you.... Shall I?" he asked evenly.

She did not answer. He drew a linen-swathed armchair toward her; she absently seated herself and lay back, caressing the roses with delicate lips and chin.

Twice she looked up at him, standing there by the boarded windows. Sunshine filtered through the latticework at the top—enough for them to see each other as in a dull afterglow.

"I wonder how soon my maid will come," she mused, dropping the loose roses on her knees. "If she is going to be very long about it perhaps— perhaps you might care to find a chair—if you have decided to wait."

He drew one from a corner and seated himself, pulses hammering his throat.

Through the stillness of the house sounded at intervals the clink of glass from the pantry. Other sounds from above indicated the plumber's progress from floor to floor.

"Do you realize," she said impulsively, "how very nice you have been to me? What a perfectly horrid position I might have been in, with poor Clarence on the back fence! And suppose I had dared follow him alone to the cellar? I—I might have been there yet—up to my neck in coal?"

She gazed into space with considerable emotion.

"And now," she said, "I am safe here in my own home. I have lunched divinely, a maid is on the way to me, Clarence remains somewhere safe indoors, Mr. Quinn is flitting from faucet to faucet, the electric light and the telephone will be in working order before very long—and it is all due to you!"

"I—I did a few things I almost w-wish I hadn't," stammered Brown, "b-because I can't, somehow, decently t-tell you how tremendously I—I—" He stuck fast.

"What?"

"It would look as though I were presuming on a t-trifling service rendered, and—oh, I can't say it; I want to, but I can't."

"Say what? Please, I don't mind what you are—are going to say."

"It's—it's that I——"

"Y-es?" in soft encouragement.

"W-want to know you most tremendously now. I don't want to wait several years for chance and hazard."

"O-h!" as though the information conveyed a gentle shock to her. Her low- breathed exclamation nearly finished Brown.

"I knew you'd think it unpardonable for me—at such a time—to venture to—to—ask—say—express—convey——"

"Why do you—how can I—where could we—" She recovered herself resolutely. "I do not think we ought to take advantage of an accident like this.... Do you? Besides, probably, in the natural course of social events——"

"But it may be years! months! weeks!" insisted Brown, losing control of himself.

"I should hope it would at least be a decently reasonable interval of several weeks——"

"But I don't know what to do if I never see you again for weeks! I c-care so much—for—you."

She shrank back in her chair, and in her altered face he read that he had disgraced himself.

"I knew I was going to," he said in despair. "I couldn't keep it—I couldn't stop it. And now that you see what sort of a man I am I'm going to tell you more."

"You need not," she said faintly.

"I must. Listen! I—I don't even know your full name—all I know is that it is Betty, and that your cat's name is Clarence and your plumber's name is Quinn. But if I didn't know anything at all concerning you it would have been the same. I suppose you will think me insane if I tell you that before the car, on which you rode, came into sight I knew you were on it. And I—cared—for—you—before I ever saw you."

"I don't understand——"

"I know you don't. I don't. All I understand is that what you and I have done has been done by us before, sometime, somewhere—part only— down to—down to where you changed cars. Up to that moment, before you took the Lexington Avenue car, I recognized each incident as it occurred.... But when all this happened to us before I must have lost courage—for I did not recognize anything after that except that I cared for you.... Do you understand one single word of what I have been saying?"

The burning color in her face had faded slowly while he was speaking; her lifted eyes grew softer, serious, as he ended impetuously.

She looked at him in retrospective silence. There was no mistaking his astonishing sincerity, his painfully earnest endeavor to impart to her some rather unusual ideas in which he certainly believed. No man who looked that way at a woman could mean impertinence; her own intelligence satisfied her that he had not meant and could never mean offense to any woman.

"Tell me," she said quietly, "just what you mean. It is not possible for you to—care—for—me.... Is it?"

He disclosed to her, beginning briefly with his own name, material and social circumstances, a pocket edition of his hitherto uneventful career, the advent that morning of the emissary from The Green Mouse, his discussion with Smith, the strange sensation which crept over him as he emerged from the tunnel at Forty-second Street, his subsequent altercation with Smith, and the events that ensued up to the eruption of Clarence.

He spoke in his most careful attorney's manner, frank, concise, convincing, free from any exaggeration of excitement or emotion. And she listened, alternately fascinated and appalled as, step by step, his story unfolded the links in an apparently inexorable sequence involving this young man and herself in a predestined string of episodes not yet ended— if she permitted herself to credit this astounding story.

Sensitively intelligent, there was no escaping the significance of the only possible deduction. She drew it and blushed furiously. For a moment, as the truth clamored in her brain, the self-evidence of it stunned her. But she was young, and the shamed recoil came automatically. Incredulous, almost exasperated, she raised her head to confront him; the red lips parted in outraged protest—parted and remained so, wordless, silent—the soundless, virginal cry dying unuttered on a mouth that had imperceptibly begun to tremble.

Her head sank slowly; she laid her white hands above the roses heaped in her lap.

For a long while she remained so. And he did not speak.

First the butler went away. Then Mr. Quinn followed. The maid had not yet arrived. The house was very still.

And after the silence had worn his self-control to the breaking point he rose and walked to the dining room and stood looking down into the yard. The grass out there was long and unkempt; roses bloomed on the fence; wistaria, in its deeper green of midsummer, ran riot over the trellis where Clarence had basely dodged his lovely mistress, and, after making a furry pin wheel of himself, had fled through the airhole into Stygian depths.

Somewhere above, in the silent house, Clarence was sulkily dissembling.

"I suppose," said Brown, quietly coming back to where the girl was sitting in the golden dusk, "that I might as well find Clarence while we are waiting for your maid. May I go up and look about?"

And taking her silence as assent, he started upstairs.

He hunted carefully, thoroughly, opening doors, peeping under furniture, investigating clothespresses, listening at intervals, at intervals calling with misleading mildness. But, like him who died in malmsey, Clarence remained perjured and false to all sentiments of decency so often protested purringly to his fair young mistress.

Mechanically Brown opened doors of closets, knowing, if he had stopped to think, that cats don't usually turn knobs and let themselves into tightly closed places.

In one big closet on the fifth floor, however, as soon as he opened the door there came a rustle, and he sprang forward to intercept the perfidious one; but it was only the air stirring the folds of garments hanging on the wall.

As he turned to step forth again the door gently closed with an ominous click, shutting him inside. And after five minutes' frantic fussing he realized that he was imprisoned by a spring lock at the top of a strange house, inhabited only by a cat and a bewildered young girl, who might, at any moment now that the telephone was in order, call a cab and flee from a man who had tried to explain to her that they were irrevocably predestined for one another.

Calling and knocking were dignified and permissible, but they did no good. To kick violently at the door was not dignified, but he was obliged to do it. Evidently the closet was too remote for the sound to penetrate down four flights of stairs.

He tried to break down the door—they do it in all novels. He only rebounded painfully, ineffectively, which served him right for reading fiction.

It irked him to shout; he hesitated for a long while; then sudden misgiving lest she might flee the house seized him and he bellowed. It was no use.

The pitchy quality of the blackness in the closet aided him in bruising himself; he ran into a thousand things of all kinds of shapes and textures every time he moved. And at each fresh bruise he grew madder and madder, and, holding the cat responsible, applied language to Clarence of which he had never dreamed himself capable.

Then he sat down. He remained perfectly still for a long while, listening and delicately feeling his hurts. A curious drowsiness began to irritate him; later the irritation subsided and he felt a little sleepy.

His heart, however, thumped like an inexpensive clock; the cedar-tainted air in the closet grew heavier; he felt stupid, swaying as he rose. No wonder, for the closet was as near air-tight as it could be made. Fortunately he did not realize it.

And, meanwhile, downstairs, Betty was preparing for flight.

She did not know where she was going—how far away she could get in a rose-silk morning gown. But she had discovered, in a clothespress, an automobile duster, cap, and goggles; on the strength of these she tried the telephone, found it working, summoned a coupe, and was now awaiting its advent. But the maid from Dooley's must first arrive to take charge of the house and Clarence until she, Betty, could summon her family to her assistance and defy The Green Mouse, Beekman Brown, and Destiny behind her mother's skirts.

Flight was, therefore, imperative—it was absolutely indispensable that she put a number of miles between herself and this young man who had just informed her that Fate had designed them for one another.

She was no longer considering whether she owed this amazing young man any gratitude, or what sort of a man he might be, agreeable, well-bred, attractive; all she understood was that this man had suddenly stepped into her life, politely expressing his conviction that they could not, ultimately, hope to escape from each other. And, beginning to realize the awful import of his words, the only thing that restrained her from instant flight on foot was the hidden Clarence. She could not abandon her cat. She must wait for that maid. She waited. Meanwhile she hunted up Dooley's Agency in the telephone book and called them up. They told her the maid was on the way—as though Dooley's Agency could thwart Destiny with a whole regiment of its employees!

She had discarded her roses with a shudder; cap, goggles, duster, lay in her lap. If the maid came before Brown returned she'd flee. If Brown came back before the maid arrived she'd tell him plainly what she had decided on, thank him, tell him kindly but with decision that, considering the incredible circumstances of their encounter, she must decline to encourage any hope he might entertain of ever again seeing her.

At this stern resolve her heart, being an automatic and independent affair, refused to approve, and began an unpleasantly irregular series of beats which annoyed her.

"It is true," she admitted to herself, "that he is a gentleman, and I can scarcely be rude enough, after what he has done for me, to leave him without any explanation at all.... His clothes are ruined. I must remember that."

Her heart seemed to approve such sentiments, and it beat more regularly as she seated herself at a desk, found in it a sheet of notepaper and a pencil, and wrote rapidly:

"Dear Mr. Brown:

"If my maid comes before you do I am going. I can't help it. The maid will stay to look after Clarence until I can return with some of the family. I don't mean to be rude, but I simply cannot stand what you told me about our—about what you told me.... I'm sorry you tore your clothes.

"Please believe my flight has nothing to do with you personally or your conduct, which was perfectly ('charming' scratched out) proper. It is only that to be suddenly told that one is predestined to ('marry' scratched out) become intimately acquainted (all this scratched out and a new line begun).

"It is unendurable for a girl to think that there is no freedom of choice in life left her—to be forced, by what you say are occult currents, into—friendship—with a perfectly strange man at the other end. So I don't think we had better ever again attempt to find anybody to present us to each other. This doesn't sound right, but you will surely understand.

"Please do not misjudge me. I must appear to you uncivil, ungrateful, and childish—but I am, somehow, a little frightened. I know you are perfectly nice—but all that has happened is almost, in a way, terrifying to me. Not that I am cowardly; but you must understand. You will—won't you?.... But what is the use of my asking you, as I shall never see you again.

"So I am only going to thank you, and say ('with all my heart' crossed out) very cordially, that you have been most kind, most generous and considerate—most—most——"

* * * * *

Her pencil faltered; she looked into space, and the image of Beekman Brown, pleasant-eyed, attractive, floated unbidden out of vacancy and looked at her.

She stared back at the vision curiously, more curiously as her mind evoked the agreeable details of his features, resting there, chin on the back of her hand, from which, presently, the pencil fell unheeded.

What could he be doing upstairs all this while. She had not heard him for many minutes now. Why was he so still?

She straightened up at her desk and glanced uneasily across her shoulder, listening.

Not a sound from above; she rose and walked to the foot of the stairs.

Why was he so still? Had he found Clarence? Had anything gone wrong? Had Clarence become suddenly rabid and attacked him. Cats can't annihilate big, strong young men. But where was he? Had he, pursuing his quest, emerged through the scuttle on to the roof—and—and—fallen off?

Scarcely knowing what she did she mounted on tiptoe to the second floor, listening. The silence troubled her; she went from room to room, opening doors and clothespresses. Then she mounted to the third floor, searching more quickly. On the fourth floor she called to him in a voice not quite steady. There was no reply.

Alarmed now, she hurriedly flung open doors everywhere, then, picking up her rose-silk skirts, she ran to the top floor and called tremulously.

A faint sound answered; bewildered, she turned to the first closet at hand, and her cheeks suddenly blanched as she sprang to the door of the cedar press and tore it wide open.

He was lying on his face amid a heap of rolled rugs, clothes hangers and furs, quite motionless.

She knew enough to run into the servants' rooms, fling open the windows and, with all the strength in her young body, drag the inanimate youth across the floor and into the fresh air.

"O-h!" she said, and said it only once. Then, ashy of lip and cheek, she took hold of Brown and, lashing her memory to help her in the emergency, performed for that inanimate gentleman the rudiments of an exercise which, if done properly, is supposed to induce artificial respiration.

It certainly induced something resembling it in Brown. After a while he made unlovely and inarticulate sounds; after a while the sounds became articulate. He said: "Betty!" several times, more or less distinctly. He opened one eye, then the other; then his hands closed on the hands that were holding his wrists; he looked up at her from where he lay on the floor. She, crouched beside him, eyes still dilated with the awful fear of death, looked back, breathless, trembling.

"That is a devil of a place, that closet," he said faintly.

She tried to smile, tried wearily to free her hands, watched them, dazed, being drawn toward him, drawn tight against his lips—felt his lips on them.

Then, without warning, an incredible thrill shot through her to the heart, stilling it—silencing pulse and breath—nay, thought itself. She heard him speaking; his words came to her like distant sounds in a dream:

"I cared for you. You give me life—and I adore you.... Let me. It will not harm you. The problem of life is solved for me; I have solved it; but unless some day you will prove it for me—Betty—the problem of life is but a sorry sum—a total of ciphers without end.... No other two people in all the world could be what we are and what we have been to each other. No other two people could dare to face what we dare face." He paused: "Dare we, Betty?"

Her eyes turned from his. He rose unsteadily, supported on one arm; she sprang to her feet, looked at him, and, as he made an awkward effort to rise, suddenly bent forward and gave him both hands in aid.

"Wait—wait!" she said; "let me try to think, if I can. Don't speak to me again—not yet—not now."

But, at intervals, as they descended the flights of stairs, she turned instinctively to watch his progress, for he still moved with difficulty.

In the drawing-room they halted, he leaning heavily on the back of a chair, she, distrait, restless, pacing the polished parquet, treading her roses under foot, turning from time to time to look at him—a strange, direct, pure-lidded gaze that seemed to freshen his very soul.

Once he stooped and picked up one of the trodden roses bruised by her slim foot; once, as she passed him, pacing absently the space between the door and him, he spoke her name.

But: "Wait!" she breathed. "You have said everything. It is for me to reply—if I speak at all. C-can't you wait for—me?"

"Have I angered you?"

She halted, head high, superb in her slim, young beauty.

"Do I look it?"

"I don't know."

"Nor I. Let me find out."

The room had become dimmer; the light on her hair and face and hands glimmered dully as she passed and re-passed him in her restless progress— restless, dismayed, frightened progress toward a goal she already saw ahead—close ahead of her—every time she turned to look at him. She already knew the end.

That man! And she knew that already he must be, for her, something that she could never again forget—something she must reckon with forever and ever while life endured.

She paused and inspected him almost insolently. Suddenly the rush of the last revolt overwhelmed her; her eyes blazed, her white hands tightened into two small clenched fists—and then tumult died in her ringing ears, the brightness of the eyes was quenched, her hands relaxed, her head sank low, lower, never again to look on this man undismayed, heart free, unafraid—never again to look into this man's eyes with the unthinking, unbelieving tranquillity born of the most harmless skepticism in the world.

She stood there in silence, heard his step beside her, raised her head with an effort.

"Betty!"

Her hands quivered, refusing surrender. He bent and lifted them, pressing them to his eyes, his forehead. Then lowered them to the level of his lips, holding them suspended, eyes looking into hers, waiting.

Suddenly her eyes closed, a convulsive little tremor swept her, she pressed both clasped hands against his lips, her own moved, but no words came—only a long, sweet, soundless sigh, soft as the breeze that stirs the crimson maple buds when the snows of spring at last begin to melt.

From a dark corner under the piano Clarence watched them furtively.



XII

SYBILLA

Showing What Comes of Disobedience, Rosium, and Flour-Paste

About noon Bushwyck Carr bounced into the gymnasium, where the triplets had just finished their fencing lesson.

"Did any of you three go into the laboratory this morning?" he demanded, his voice terminating in a sort of musical bellow, like the blast of a mellow French horn on a touring car.

The triplets—Flavilla, Drusilla, and Sybilla—all clothed precisely alike in knee kilts, plastrons, gauntlets and masks, came to attention, saluting their parent with their foils. The Boznovian fencing mistress, Madame Tzinglala, gracefully withdrew to the dressing room and departed.

"Which of you three girls went into the laboratory this morning?" repeated their father impatiently.

The triplets continued to stand in a neat row, the buttons of their foils aligned and resting on the hardwood floor. In graceful unison they removed their masks; three flushed and unusually pretty faces regarded the author of their being attentively—more attentively still when that round and ruddy gentleman, executing a facial contortion, screwed his monocle into an angry left eye and glared.

"Didn't I warn you to keep out of that laboratory?" he asked wrathfully; "didn't I explain to you that it was none of your business? I believe I informed you that whatever is locked up in that room is no concern of yours. Didn't I?"

"Yes, Pa-pah."

"Well, confound it, what did you go in for, then?"

An anxious silence was his answer. "You didn't all go in, did you?" he demanded in a melodious bellow.

"Oh, no, Pa-pah!"

"Did two of you go?"

"Oh-h, n-o, Pa-pah!"

"Well, which one did?"

The line of beauty wavered for a moment; then Sybilla stepped slowly to the front, three paces, and halted with downcast eyes.

"I told you not to, didn't I?" said her father, scowling the monocle out of his eye and reinserting it.

"Y-yes, Pa-pah."

"But you did?"

"Y-yes——"

"That will do! Flavilla! Drusilla! You are excused," dismissing the two guiltless triplets with a wave of the terrible eyeglass; and when they had faced to the rear and retired in good order, closing the door behind them, he regarded his delinquent daughter in wrathy and rubicund dismay.

"What did you see in that laboratory?" he demanded.

Sybilla began to count on her fingers. "As I walked around the room I noticed jars, bottles, tubes, lamps, retorts, blowpipes, batteries——"

"Did you notice a small, shiny machine that somewhat resembles the interior economy of a watch?"

"Yes, Pa-pah, but I haven't come to that yet——"

"Did you go near it?"

"Quite near——"

"You didn't touch it, did you?"

"I was going to tell you——"

"Did you?" he bellowed musically. "Answer me, Sybilla!"

"Y-yes—I did."

"What did you suppose it to be?"

"I thought—we all thought—that you kept a wireless telephone instrument in there——"

"Why? Just because I happen to be president of the Amalgamated Wireless Trust Company?"

"Yes. And we were dying to see a wireless telephone work.... I thought I'd like to call up Central—just to be sure I could make the thing go— What is the matter, Pa-pah?"

He dropped into a wadded armchair and motioned Sybilla to a seat opposite. Then with another frightful facial contortion he reimbedded the monocle.

"So you deliberately opened that door and went in to rummage?"

"No," said the girl; "we were—skylarking a little, on our way to the gymnasium; and I gave Brasilia a little shove toward the laboratory door, and then Flavilla pushed me—very gently—and somehow I—the door flew open and my mask fell off and rolled inside; and I went in after it. That is how it happened—partly."

She lifted her dark and very beautiful eyes to her stony parent, then they dropped, and she began tracing figures and arabesques on the polished floor with the point of her foil. "That is partly how," she repeated.

"What is the other part?"

"The other part was that, having unfortunately disobeyed you, and being already in the room, I thought I might as well stay and take a little peep around——"

Her father fairly bounced in his padded chair. The velvet-eyed descendant of Eve shot a fearful glance at him and continued, still casually tracing invisible arabesques with her foil's point.

"You see, don't you," she said, "that being actually in, I thought I might as well do something before I came out again, which would make my disobedience worth the punishment. So I first picked up my mask, then I took a scared peep around. There were only jars and bottles and things.... I was dreadfully disappointed. The certainty of being punished and then, after all, seeing nothing but bottles, did seem rather unfair.... So I—walked around to—to see if I could find something to look at which would repay me for the punishment.... There is a proverb, isn't there Pa-pah?—something about being executed for a lamb——"

"Go on!" he said sharply.

"Well, all I could find that looked as though I had no business to touch it was a little jeweled machine——"

"That was it! Did you touch it?"

"Yes, several times. Was it a wireless?"

"Never mind! Yes, it's one kind of a wireless instrument. Go on!"

Sybilla shook her head:

"I'm sure I don't see why you are so disturbingly emphatic; because I haven't an idea how to send or receive a wireless message, and I hadn't the vaguest notion how that machine might work. I tried very hard to make it go; I turned several screws and pushed all the push-buttons——"

Mr. Carr emitted a hollow, despairing sound—a sort of musical groan—and feebly plucked at space.

"I tried every lever, screw, and spring," she went on calmly, "but the machine must have been out of order, for I only got one miserable little spark——"

"You got a spark?"

"Yes—just a tiny, noiseless atom of white fire——"

Her father bounced to his feet and waved both hands at her distractedly.

"Do you know what you've done?" he bellowed.

"N-no——"

"Well, you've prepared yourself to fall in love! And you've probably induced some indescribable pup to fall in love with you! And that's what you've done!"

"In—love!"

"Yes, you have!"

"But how can a common wireless telephone——"

"It's another kind of a wireless. Your brother-in-law, William Destyn, invented it; I'm backing it and experimenting with it. I told you to keep out of that room. I hung up a sign on the door: 'Danger! Keep out!'"

"W-was that thing loaded?"

"Yes, it was loaded!"

"W-what with?"

"Waves!" shouted her father, furiously. "Psychic waves! You little ninny, we've just discovered that the world and everything in it is enveloped in psychic waves, as well as invisible electric currents. The minute you got near that machine and opened the receiver, waves from your subconscious personality flowed into it. And the minute you touched that spring and got a spark, your psychic waves had signaled, by wireless, the subconscious personality of some young man—some insufferable pup—who'll come from wherever he is at present—from the world's end if need be—and fall in love with you."

Mr. Carr jumped ponderously up and down in pure fury; his daughter regarded him in calm consternation.

"I am so very, very sorry," she said; "but I am quite certain that I am not going to fall in love——"

"You can't help it," roared her father, "if that instrument worked."

"Is—is that what it's f-for?"

"That's what it's invented for; that's why I'm putting a million into it. Anybody on earth desiring to meet the person with whom they're destined, some time or other, to fall in love, can come to us, in confidence, buy a ticket, and be hitched on to the proper psychic connection which insures speedy courtship and marriage—Damnation!"

"Pa-pah!"

"I can't help it! Any self-respecting, God-fearing father would swear! Do you think I ever expected to have my daughters mixed up with this machine? My daughters wooed, engaged and married by machinery! And you're only eighteen; do you hear me? I won't have it! I'll certainly not have it!"

"But, dear, I don't in the least intend to fall in love and marry at eighteen. And if—he—really—comes, I'll tell him very frankly that I could not think of falling in love. I'll quietly explain that the machine went off by mistake and that I am only eighteen; and that Flavilla and Drusilla and I are not to come out until next winter. That," she added innocently, "ought to hold him."

"The thing to do," said her father, gazing fixedly at her, "is to keep you in your room until you're twenty!"

"Oh, Pa-pah!"

Mr. Carr smote his florid brow.

"You'll stay in for a week, anyway!" he thundered mellifluously. "No motoring party for you! That's your punishment. You'll be safe for today, anyhow; and by evening William Destyn will be back from Boston and I'll consult him as to the safest way to keep you out of the path of this whippersnapper you have managed to wake up—evoke—stir out of space— wherever he may be—whoever he may be—whatever he chances to call himself——"

"George," she murmured involuntarily.

"What!!"

She looked at her father, abashed, confused.

"How absurd of me," she said. "I don't know why I should have thought of that name, George; or why I should have said it out loud—that way—I really don't——"

"Who do you know named George?"

"N-nobody in particular that I can think of——"

"Sybilla! Be honest!"

"Really, I don't; I am always honest."

He knew she was truthful, always; but he said:

"Then why the devil did you look—er—so, so moonily at me and call me George?"

"I can't imagine—I can't understand——"

"Well, I can! You don't realize it, but that cub's name must be George! I'll look out for the Georges. I'm glad I've been warned. I'll see that no two-legged object named George enters this house! You'll never go anywhere where there's anybody named George if I can prevent it."

"I—I don't want to," she returned, almost ready to cry. "You are very cruel to me——"

"I wish to be. I desire to be a monster!" he retorted fiercely. "You're an exceedingly bad, ungrateful, undutiful, disobedient and foolish child. Your sisters and I are going to motor to Westchester and lunch there with your sister and your latest brother-in-law. And if they ask why you didn't come I'll tell them that it's because you're undutiful, and that you are not to stir outdoors for a week, or see anybody who comes into this house!"

"I—I suppose I d-deserve it," she acquiesced tearfully. "I'm quite ready to be disciplined, and quite willing not to see anybody named George— ever! Besides, you have scared me d-dreadfully! I—I don't want to go out of the house."