Chapter I: The Sub-Deb: a Theme Written and Submitted in Literature (2)

Altogether, it was a terrible evening. I danced three dances out of four with knickerbockers, and one with old Mr. Adams, who is fat and rotates his partner at the corners by swinging her on his waistcoat. Carter did not dance at all, and every time I tried to speak to him he was taking a crowd of the little girls to the fruit-punch bowl.

I determined to have things out with H during the cotillion, and tell him that I would never marry him, that I would die first. But I was favored a great deal, and when we did have a chance the music was making such a noise that I would have had to shout. Our chairs were next to the band.

But at last we had a minute, and I went out to the verandah, which was closed in with awnings. He had to follow, of course, and I turned and faced him.

"Now" I said, "this has got to stop."

"I don't understand you, Bab."

"You do, perfectly well," I stormed. "I can't stand it. I am going crazy."

"Oh," he said slowly. "I see. I've been dancing too much with the little girl with the eyes! Honestly, Bab, I was only doing it to disarm suspicion. MY EVERY THOUGHT IS OF YOU."

"I mean," I said, as firmly as I could, "that this whole thing has got to stop. I can't stand it."

"Am I to understand," he said solemnly, "that you intend to end everything?"

I felt perfectly wild and helpless.

"After that Letter!" he went on. "After that sweet Letter! You said, you know, that you were mad to see me, and that--it is almost too sacred to repeat, even to YOU--that you would always love me. After that Confession I refuse to agree that all is over. It can NEVER be over."

"I daresay I am losing my mind," I said. "It all sounds perfectly natural. But it doesn't mean anything. There CAN'T be any Harold Valentine; because I made him up. But there is, so there must be. And I am going crazy."

"Look here," he stormed, suddenly quite raving, and throwing out his right hand. It would have been terribly dramatic, only he had a glass of punch in it. "I am not going to be played with. And you are not going to jilt me without a reason. Do you mean to deny everything? Are you going to say, for instance, that I never sent you any violets? Or gave you my Photograph, with an--er--touching inscription on it?" Then, appealingly, "You can't mean to deny that Photograph, Bab!"

And then that lanky wretch of an Eddie Perkins brought me a toy balloon, and I had to dance, with my heart crushed.

Nevertheless, I ate a fair supper. I felt that I needed Strength. It was quite a grown-up supper, with bullion and creamed chicken and baked ham and sandwiches, among other things. But of course they had to show it was a 'kid' party, after all. For instead of coffee we had milk.

Milk! When I was going through a tragedy. For if it is not a tragedy to be engaged to a man one never saw before, what is it?

All through the refreshments I could feel that his eyes were on me. And I hated him. It was all well enough for Jane to say he was handsome. She wasn't going to have to marry him. I detest dimples in chins. I always have. And anybody could see that it was his first mustache, and soft, and that he took it round like a mother pushing a new baby in a perambulator. It was sickening.

I left just after supper. He did not see me when I went upstairs, but he had missed me, for when Hannah and I came down, he was at the door, waiting. Hannah was loaded down with silly favors, and lagged behind, which gave him a chance to speak to me. I eyed him coldly and tried to pass him, but I had no chance.

"I'll see you tomorrow, DEAREST," he whispered.

"Not if I can help it," I said, looking straight ahead. Hannah had dropped a stocking--not her own. One of the Christmas favors--and was fumbling about for it.

"You are tired and unnerved to-night, Bab. When I have seen your father tomorrow, and talked to him----"

"Don't you dare to see my father."

"----and when he has agreed to what I propose," he went on, without paying any attention to what I had said, "you will be calmer. We can plan things."

Hannah came puffing up then, and he helped us into the motor. He was very careful to see that we were covered with the robes, and he tucked Hannah's feet in. She was awfully flattered. Old Fool! And she babbled about him until I wanted to slap her.

"He's a nice young man. Miss Bab," she said. "That is, if he's the One. And he has nice manners. So considerate. Many a party I've taken your sister to, and never before----"

"I wish you'd shut up, Hannah," I said. "He's a pig, and I hate him."

She sulked after that, and helped me out of my things at home without a word. When I was in bed, however, and she was hanging up my clothes, she said:

"I don't know what's got into you, Miss Barbara. You are that cross that there's no living with you."

"Oh, go away," I said.

"And what's more," she added, "I don't know but what your mother ought to know about these goings on. You're only a little girl, with all your high and mightiness, and there's going to be no scandal in this family if I can help it."

I put the bedclothes over my head, and she went out.

But of course I could not sleep. Sis was not home yet, or mother, and I went into Sis's room and got a novel from her table. It was the story of a woman who had married a man in a hurry, and without really loving him, and when she had been married a year, and hated the very way her husband drank his coffee and cut the ends off his cigars, she found some one she really loved with her whole heart. And it was too late. But she wrote him one letter, the other man, you know, and it caused a lot of trouble. So she said--I remember the very words--

"Half the troubles in the world are caused by letters. Emotions are changeable things"--this was after she had found that she really loved her husband after all, but he had had to shoot himself before she found it out, although not fatally--"but the written word does not change. It remains always, embodying a dead truth and giving it apparent life. No woman should ever put her thoughts on paper."

She got the letter back, but she had to steal it. And it turned out that the other man had really only wanted her money all the time.

That story was a real illumination to me. I shall have a great deal of money when I am of age, from my grandmother. I saw it all. It was a trap sure enough. And if I was to get out I would have to have the letter.

IT WAS THE LETTER THAT PUT ME IN HIS POWER.

The next day was Christmas. I got a lot of things, including the necklace, and a mending basket from Sis, with the hope that it would make me tidy, and father had bought me a set of silver fox, which mother did not approve of, it being too expensive for a young girl to wear, according to her. I must say that for an hour or two I was happy enough.

But the afternoon was terrible. We keep open house on Xmas afternoon, and father makes a champagne punch, and somebody pours tea, although nobody drinks it, and there are little cakes from the club, and the house is decorated with poinsettias.

At eleven o'clock the mail came in, and mother sorted it over, while father took a gold piece out to the post-man.

There were about a million cards, and mother glanced at the addresses and passed them round. But suddenly she frowned. There was a small parcel, addressed to me.

"This looks like a gift, Barbara," she said. And proceeded to open it.

My heart skipped two beats, and then hammered. Mother's mouth was set as she tore off the paper and opened the box. There was a card, which she glanced at, and underneath, was a book of poems.

"Love Lyrics," said mother, in a terrible voice. "To Barbara, from H----"

"Mother----" I began, in an earnest tone.

"A child of mine receiving such a book from a man!" she went on. "Barbara, I am speechless."

But she was not speechless. If she was speechless for the next half hour, I would hate to hear her really converse. And all that I could do was to bear it. For I had made a Frankenstein--see the book read last term by the Literary Society--not out of grave-yard fragments, but from malted milk tablets, so to speak, and now it was pursuing me to an early grave. For I felt that I simply could not continue to live.

"Now--where does he live?"

"I--don't know, mother."

"You sent him a letter."

"I don't know where he lives, anyhow."

"Leila," mother said, "will you ask Hannah to bring my smelling salts?"

"Aren't you going to give me the book?" I asked. "It--it sounds interesting."

"You are shameless," mother said, and threw the thing into the fire. A good many of my things seemed to be going into the fire at that time. I cannot help wondering what they would have done if it had all happened in the summer, and no fires burning. They would have felt quite helpless, I imagine.

Father came back just then, but he did not see the book, which was then blazing with a very hot red flame. I expected mother to tell him, and I daresay I should not have been surprised to see my furs follow the book. I had got into the way of expecting to see things burning that do not belong in a fireplace. But mother did not tell him.

I have thought over this a great deal, and I believe that now I understand. Mother was unjustly putting the blame for everything on this School, and mother had chosen the School. My father had not been much impressed by the catalog. "Too much dancing room and not enough tennis courts," he had said. This, of course, is my father's opinion. Not mine.

The real reason, then, for mother's silence was that she disliked confessing that she made a mistake in her choice of a School.

I ate very little luncheon and my only comfort was my seed pearls. I was wearing them, for fear the door-bell would ring, and a letter or flowers would arrive from H. In that case I felt quite sure that someone, in a frenzy, would burn the pearls also.

The afternoon was terrible. It rained solid sheets, and Patrick, the butler, gave notice three hours after he had received his Christmas presents, on account of not being let off for early mass.

But my father's punch is famous, and people came, and stood around and buzzed, and told me I had grown and was almost a young lady. And Tommy Gray got out of his cradle and came to call on me, and coughed all the time, with a whoop. He developed the whooping cough later. He had on his first long trousers, and a pair of lavender socks and a tie to match. He said they were not exactly the same shade, but he did not think it would be noticed. Hateful child!

At half past five, when the place was jammed, I happened to look up. Carter Brooks was in the hall, and behind him was H. He had seen me before I saw him, and he had a sort of sickly grin, meant to denote joy. I was talking to our bishop at the time, and he was asking me what sort of services we had in the school chapel.

I meant to say "non-sectarian," but in my surprise and horror I regret to say that I said, "vegetarian." Carter Brooks came over to me like a cat to a saucer of milk, and pulled me off into a corner.

"It's all right," he said. "I phoned mama, and she said to bring him. He's known as Grosvenor here, of course. They'll never suspect a thing. Now, do I get a small 'thank you'?"

"I won't see him."

"Now look here, Bab," he protested, "you two have got to make this thing up You are a pair of idiots, quarreling over nothing. Poor old Hal is all broken up. He's sensitive. You've got to remember how sensitive he is."

"Go, away" I cried, in broken tones. "Go away, and take him with you."

"Not until he had spoken to your Father," he observed, setting his jaw. "He's here for that, and you know it. You can't play fast and loose with a man, you know."

"Don't you dare to let him speak to father!"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"That's between you two, of course," he said. "It's not up to me. Tell him yourself, if you've changed your mind. I don't intend," he went on, impressively, "to have any share in ruining his life."

"Oh piffle," I said. I am aware that this is slang, and does not belong in a theme. But I was driven to saying it.

I got through the crowd by using my elbows. I am afraid I gave the bishop quite a prod, and I caught Mr. Andrews on his rotating waistcoat. But I was desperate.

Alas, I was too late.

The caterer's man, who had taken Patrick's place in a hurry, was at the punch bowl, and father was gone. I was just in time to see him take H. into his library and close the door.

Here words fail me. I knew perfectly well that beyond that door H, whom I had invented and who therefore simply did not exist, was asking for my hand. I made up my mind at once to run away and go on the stage, and I had even got part way up the stairs, when I remembered that, with a dollar for the picture and five dollars for the violets and three dollars for the hat pin I had given Sis, and two dollars and a quarter for mother's handkerchief case, I had exactly a dollar and seventy-five cents in the world.

I WAS TRAPPED.

I went up to my room, and sat and waited. Would father be violent, and throw H. out and then come upstairs, pale with fury and disinherit me? Or would the whole family conspire together, when the people had gone, and send me to a convent? I made up my mind, if it was the convent, to take the veil and be a nun. I would go to nurse lepers, or something, and then, when it was too late, they would be sorry.

The stage or the convent, nun or actress? Which?

I left the door open, but there was only the sound of revelry below. I felt then that it was to be the convent. I pinned a towel around my face, the way the nuns wear whatever they call them, and from the side it was very becoming. I really did look like Julia Marlowe, especially as my face was very sad and tragic.

At something before seven every one had gone, and I heard Sis and mother come upstairs to dress for dinner. I sat and waited, and when I heard father I got cold all over. But he went on by, and I heard him go into mother's room and close the door. Well, I knew I had to go through with it, although my life was blasted. So I dressed and went downstairs.

Father was the first down. HE CAME DOWN WHISTLING.

It is perfectly true. I could not believe my ears.

He approached me with a smiling face.

"Well, Bab," he said, exactly as if nothing had happened, "have you had a nice day?"

He had the eyes of a basilisk, that creature of fable.

"I've had a lovely day, Father," I replied. I could be basilisk-ish also.

There is a mirror over the drawing room mantle, and he turned me around until we both faced it.

"Up to my ears," he said, referring to my height. "And lovers already! Well, I daresay we must make up our minds to lose you."

"I won't be lost," I declared, almost violently. "Of course, if you intend to shove me off your hands, to the first idiot who comes along and pretends a lot of stuff, I----"

"My dear child!" said father, looking surprised. "Such an outburst! All I was trying to say, before your mother comes down, is that I--well, that I understand and that I shall not make my little girl unhappy by--er--by breaking her heart."

"Just what do you mean by that, father?"

He looked rather uncomfortable, being one who hates to talk sentiment.

"It's like this, Barbara," he said. "If you want to marry this young man--and you have made it very clear that you do--I am going to see that you do it. You are young, of course, but after all your dear mother was not much older than you are when I married her."

"Father!" I cried, from an over-flowing heart.

"I have noticed that you are not happy, Barbara," he said. "And I shall not thwart you, or allow you to be thwarted. In affairs of the heart, you are to have your own way."

"I want to tell you something!" I cried. "I will NOT be cast off! I----"

"Tut, tut," said Father. "Who is casting you off? I tell you that I like the young man, and give you my blessing, or what is the present-day equivalent for it, and you look like a figure of tragedy!"

But I could endure no more. My own father had turned on me and was rending me, so to speak. With a breaking heart and streaming eyes I flew to my chamber.

There, for hours I paced the floor.

Never, I determined, would I marry H. Better death, by far. He was a scheming fortune-hunter, but to tell the family that was to confess all. And I would never confess. I would run away before I gave Sis such a chance at me. I would run away, but first I would kill Carter Brooks.

Yes, I was driven to thoughts of murder. It shows how the first false step leads down and down, to crime and even to death. Oh never, never, gentle reader, take that first false step. Who knows to what it may lead!

"One false Step is never retrieved." Gray--On a Favorite Cat.

I reflected also on how the woman in the book had ruined her life with a letter. "The written word does not change," she had said. "It remains always, embodying a dead truth and giving it apparent life."

"Apparent life" was exactly what my letter had given to H. Frankenstein. That was what I called him, in my agony. I felt that if only I had never written the Letter there would have been no trouble. And another awful thought came to me: Was there an H after all? Could there be an H?

Once the French teacher had taken us to the theater in New York, and a woman sitting on a chair and covered with a sheet, had brought a man out of a perfectly empty cabinet, by simply willing to do it. The cabinet was empty, for four respectable looking men went up and examined it, and one even measured it with a Tape-measure.

She had materialized him, out of nothing.

And while I had had no cabinet, there are many things in this world "that we do not dream of in our philosophy." Was H. a real person, or a creature of my disordered brain? In plain and simple language, COULD THERE BE SUCH A PERSON?

I feared not.

And if there was no H, really, and I married him, where would I be?

There was a ball at the Club that night, and the family all went. No one came to say good-night to me, and by half past ten I was alone with my misery. I knew Carter Brooks would be at the ball, and H also, very likely, dancing around as agreeably as if he really existed, and I had not made him up.

I got the book from Sis's room again, and re-read it. The woman in it had been in great trouble, too, with her husband cleaning his revolver and making his will. And at last she had gone to the apartments of the man who had her letters, in a taxicab covered with a heavy veil, and had got them back. He had shot himself when she returned--the husband--but she burned the letters and then called a doctor, and he was saved. Not the doctor, of course. The husband.

The villain's only hold on her had been the letters, so he went to South Africa and was gored by an elephant, thus passing out of her life.

Then and there I knew that I would have to get my letter back from H. Without it he was powerless. The trouble was that I did not know where he was staying. Even if he came out of a cabinet, the cabinet would have to be somewhere, would it not?

I felt that I would have to meet guile with guile. And to steal one's own letter is not really stealing. Of course if he was visiting any one and pretending to be a real person, I had no chance in the world. But if he was stopping at a hotel I thought I could manage. The man in the book had had an apartment, with a Japanese servant, who went away and drew plans of American forts in the kitchen and left the woman alone with the desk containing the letter. But I daresay that was unusually lucky and not the sort of thing to look forward to.

With me, to think is to act. Hannah was out, it being Christmas and her brother-in-law having a wake, being dead, so I was free to do anything I wanted to.

First I called the club and got Carter Brooks on the telephone.

"Carter," I said, "I--I am writing a letter. Where is--where does H. stay?"

"Who?"

"H.--Mr. Grosvenor."

"Why, bless your ardent little heart! Writing, are you? It's sublime, Bab!"

"Where does he live?"

"And is it all alone you are, on Christmas Night!" he burbled. (This is a word from Alice in Wonder Land, and although not in the dictionary, is quite expressive.)

"Yes," I replied, bitterly. "I am old enough to be married off without my consent, but I am not old enough for a real Ball. It makes me sick."

"I can smuggle him here, if you want to talk to him."

"Smuggle!" I said, with scorn. "There is no need to smuggle him. The family is crazy about him. They are flinging me at him."

"Well, that's nice," he said. "Who'd have thought it! Shall I bring him to the 'phone?"

"I don't want to talk to him. I hate him."

"Look here," he observed, "if you keep that up, he'll begin to believe you. Don't take these little quarrels too hard, Barbara. He's so happy to-night in the thought that you----"

"Does he live in a cabinet, or where?"

"In a what? I don't get that word."

"Don't bother. Where shall I send his letter?"

Well, it seemed he had an apartment at the arcade, and I rang off. It was after eleven by that time, and by the time I had got into my school mackintosh and found a heavy veil of mother's and put it on, it was almost half past.

The house was quiet, and as Patrick had gone, there was no one around in the lower hall. I slipped out and closed the door behind me, and looked for a taxicab, but the veil was so heavy that I hailed our own limousine, and Smith had drawn up at the curb before I knew him.

"Where to, lady?" he said. "This is a private car, but I'll take you anywhere in the city for a dollar."

A flush of just indignation rose to my cheek, at the knowledge that Smith was using our car for a taxicab! And just as I was about to speak to him severely, and threaten to tell father, I remembered, and walked away.

"Make it seventy-five cents," he called after me. But I went on. It was terrible to think that Smith could go on renting our car to all sorts of people, covered with germs and everything, and that I could never report it to the family.

I got a real taxi at last, and got out at the arcade, giving the man a quarter, although ten cents would have been plenty as a tip.

I looked at him, and I felt that he could be trusted.

"This," I said, holding up the money, "is the price of silence."

But if he was trustworthy he was not subtle, and he said:

"The what, miss?"

"If any one asks if you have driven me here, YOU HAVE NOT" I explained, in an impressive manner.

He examined the quarter, even striking a match to look at it. Then he replied: "I have not!" and drove away.

Concealing my nervousness as best I could, I entered the doomed building. There was only a hall boy there, asleep in the elevator, and I looked at the thing with the names on it. "Mr. Grosvenor" was on the fourth floor.

I wakened the boy, and he yawned and took me to the fourth floor. My hands were stiff with nervousness by that time, but the boy was half asleep, and evidently he took me for some one who belonged there, for he said "Goodnight" to me, and went on down. There was a square landing with two doors, and "Grosvenor" was on one. I tried it gently. It was unlocked.

"FACILUS DESCENSUS IN AVERNU."

I am not defending myself. What I did was the result of desperation. But I cannot even write of my sensations as I stepped through that fatal portal, without a sinking of the heart. I had, however, had sufficient foresight to prepare an alibi. In case there was someone present in the apartment I intended to tell a falsehood, I regret to confess, and to say that I had got off at the wrong floor.

There was a sort of hall, with a clock and a table, and a shaded electric lamp, and beyond that the door was open into a sitting room.

There was a small light burning there, and the remains of a wood fire in the fireplace. There was no cabinet however.

Everything was perfectly quiet, and I went over to the fire and warmed my hands. My nails were quite blue, but I was strangely calm. I took off mother's veil, and my mackintosh, so I would be free to work, and I then looked around the room. There were a number of photographs of rather smart looking girls, and I curled my lip scornfully. He might have fooled them but he could not deceive me. And it added to my bitterness to think that at that moment the villain was dancing--and flirting probably--while I was driven to actual theft to secure the letter that placed me in his power.

When I had stopped shivering I went to his desk. There were a lot of letters on the top, all addressed to him as Grosvenor. It struck me suddenly as strange that if he was only visiting, under an assumed name, in order to see me, that so many people should be writing to him as Mr. Grosvenor. And it did not look like the room of a man who was visiting, unless he took a freight car with him on his travels.

THERE WAS A MYSTERY. All at once I knew it.

My letter was not on the desk, so I opened the top drawer. It seemed to be full of bills, and so was the one below it. I had just started on the third drawer, when a terrible thing happened.

"Hello!" said some one behind me.

I turned my head slowly, and my heart stopped.

THE PORTERES INTO THE PASSAGE HAD OPENED, AND A GENTLEMAN IN HIS EVENING CLOTHES WAS STANDING THERE.

"Just sit still, please," he said, in a perfectly cold voice. And he turned and locked the door into the hall. I was absolutely unable to speak. I tried once, but my tongue hit the roof of my mouth like the clapper of a bell.

"Now," he said, when he had turned around. "I wish you would tell me some good reason why I should not hand you over to the police."

"Oh, please don't!" I said.

"That's eloquent. But not a reason. I'll sit down and give you a little time. I take it, you did not expect to find me here."

"I'm in the wrong apartment. That's all," I said. "Maybe you'll think that's an excuse and not a reason. I can't help it if you do."

"Well," he said, "that explains some things. It's pretty well known, I fancy, that I have little worth stealing, except my good name."

"I was not stealing," I replied in a sulky manner.

"I beg your pardon," he said. "It IS an ugly word. We will strike it from the record. Would you mind telling me whose apartment you intended to--er--investigate? If this is the wrong one, you know."

"I was looking for a letter."

"Letters, letters!" he said. "When will you women learn not to write letters. Although"--he looked at me closely--"you look rather young for that sort of thing." He sighed. "It's born in you, I daresay," he said.

Well, for all his patronizing ways, he was not very old himself.

"Of course," he said, "if you are telling the truth--and it sounds fishy, I must say--it's hardly a police matter, is it? It's rather one for diplomacy. But can you prove what you say?"

"My word should be sufficient," I replied stiffly. "How do I know that YOU belong here?"

"Well, you don't, as a matter of fact. Suppose you take my word for that, and I agree to believe what you say about the wrong apartment, Even then it's rather unusual. I find a pale and determined looking young lady going through my desk in a business-like manner. She says she has come for a letter. Now the question is, is there a letter? If so, what letter?"

"It is a love letter," I said.

"Don't blush over such a confession," he said. "If it is true, be proud of it. Love is a wonderful thing. Never be ashamed of being in love, my child."

"I am not in love," I cried with bitter fury.

"Ah! Then it is not YOUR letter!"

"I wrote it."

"But to simulate a passion that does not exist--that is sacrilege. It is----"

"Oh, stop talking," I cried, in a hunted tone. "I can't bear it. If you are going to arrest me, get it over."

"I'd rather NOT arrest you, if we can find a way out. You look so young, so new to crime! Even your excuse for being here is so naive, that I--won't you tell me why you wrote a love letter, if you are not in love? And whom you sent it to? That's important, you see, as it bears on the case. I intend," he said, "to be judicial, unimpassioned, and quite fair."

"I wrote a love letter" I explained, feeling rather cheered, "but it was not intended for any one, Do you see? It was just a love letter."

"Oh," he said. "Of course. It is often done. And after that?"

"Well, it had to go somewhere. At least I felt that way about it. So I made up a name from some malted milk tablets----"

"Malted milk tablets!" he said, looking bewildered.

"Just as I was thinking up a name to send it to," I explained, "Hannah--that's mother's maid, you know--brought in some hot milk and some malted milk tablets, and I took the name from them."

"Look here," he said, "I'm unprejudiced and quite calm, but isn't the 'mother's maid' rather piling it on?"

"Hannah is mother's maid, and she brought in the milk and the tablets, I should think," I said, growing sarcastic, "that so far it is clear to the dullest mind."

"Go on," he said, leaning back and closing his eyes. "You named the letter for your mother's maid--I mean for the malted milk. Although you have not yet stated the name you chose; I never heard of any one named Milk, and as to the other, while I have known some rather thoroughly malted people--however, let that go."

"Valentine's tablets," I said. "Of course, you understand," I said, bending forward, "there was no such person. I made him up. The Harold was made up too--Harold Valentine."

"I see. Not clearly, perhaps, but I have a gleam of intelligence."

"But, after all, there was such a person. That's clear, isn't it? And now he considers that we are engaged, and--and he insists on marrying me."

"That," he said, "is really easy to understand. I don't blame him at all. He is clearly a person of discernment."

"Of course," I said bitterly, "you would be on HIS side. Every one is."

"But the point is this," he went on. "If you made him up out of the whole cloth, as it were, and there was no such person, how can there be such a person? I am merely asking to get it all clear in my head. It sounds so reasonable when you say it, but there seems to be something left out."

"I don't know how he can be, but he is," I said, hopelessly. "And he is exactly like his picture."

"Well, that's not unusual, you know."

"It is in this case. Because I bought the picture in a shop, and just pretended it was him. (He?) And it WAS."

He got up and paced the floor.

"It's a very strange case," he said. "Do you mind if I light a cigarette? It helps to clear my brain. What was the name you gave him?"

"Harold Valentine. But he is here under another name, because of my family. They think I am a mere child, you see, and so of course he took a NOM DE PLUME."

"A NOM DE PLUME? Oh I see! What is it?"

"Grosvenor," I said. "The same as yours."

"There's another Grosvenor in the building, That's where the trouble came in, I suppose, Now let me get this straight. You wrote a letter, and somehow or other he got it, and now you want it back. Stripped of the things that baffle my intelligence, that's it, isn't it?"

I rose in excitement.

"Then, if he lives in the building, the letter is probably here. Why can't you go and get it for me?"

"Very neat! And let you slip away while I am gone?"

I saw that he was still uncertain that I was telling him the truth. It was maddening. And only the Letter itself could convince him.

"Oh, please try to get it," I cried, almost weeping. "You can lock me in here, if you are afraid I will run away. And he is out. I know he is. He is at the club ball."

"Naturally," he said "the fact that you are asking me to compound a felony, commit larceny, and be an accessory after the fact does not trouble you. As I told you before, all I have left is my good name, and now----!"

"Please!" I said.

He stared down at me.

"Certainly," he said. "Asked in that tone, murder would be one of the easiest things I do. But I shall lock you in."

"Very well," I said meekly. And after I had described it--the letter--to him he went out.

I had won, but my triumph was but sackcloth and ashes in my mouth. I had won, but at what a cost! Ah, how I wished that I might live again the past few days! That I might never have started on my path of deception! Or that, since my intentions at the start had been so innocent, I had taken another photograph at the shop, which I had fancied considerably but had heartlessly rejected because of no mustache.

He was gone for a long time, and I sat and palpitated. For what if H. had returned early and found him and called in the police?

But the latter had not occurred, for at ten minutes after one he came back, entering by the window from a fire-escape, and much streaked with dirt.

"Narrow escape, dear child!" he observed, locking the window and drawing the shade. "Just as I got it, your--er--gentleman friend returned and fitted his key in the lock. I am not at all sure," he said, wiping his hands with his handkerchief, "that he will not regard the open window as a suspicious circumstance. He may be of a low turn of mind. However, all's well that ends here in this room. Here it is."

I took it, and my heart gave a great leap of joy. I was saved.

"Now," he said, "we'll order a taxicab and get you home. And while it is coming suppose you tell me the thing over again. It's not as clear to me as it ought to be, even now."

So then I told him--about not being out yet, and Sis having flowers sent her, and her room done over, and never getting to bed until dawn. And that they treated me like a mere child, which was the reason for everything, and about the poem, which he considered quite good. And then about the letter.

"I get the whole thing a bit clearer now," he said. "Of course, it is still cloudy in places. The making up somebody to write to is understandable, under the circumstances. But it is odd to have had the very person materialize, so to speak. It makes me wonder--well, how about burning the letter, now we've got it? It would be better, I think. The way things have been going with you, if we don't destroy it, it is likely to walk off into somebody else's pocket and cause more trouble."

So we burned it, and then the telephone rang and said the taxi was there.

"I'll get my coat and be ready in a jiffy," he said, "and maybe we can smuggle you into the house and no one the wiser. We'll try anyhow."

He went into the other room and I sat by the fire and thought. You remember that when I was planning Harold Valentine, I had imagined him with a small, dark mustache, and deep, passionate eyes? Well, this Mr. Grosvenor had both, or rather, all three. And he had the loveliest smile, with no dimple. He was, I felt, exactly the sort of man I could die for.

It was too tragic that, with all the world to choose from, I had not taken him instead of H.

We walked downstairs, so as not to give the elevator boy a chance to talk, he said. But he was asleep again, and we got to the street and to the taxicab without being seen.

Oh, I was very cheerful. When I think of it--but I might have known, all along. Nothing went right with me that week.

Just before we got to the house he said:

"Goodnight and goodbye, little Barbara. I'll never forget you and this evening. And save me a dance at your coming-out party. I'll be there."

I held out my hand, and he took it and kissed it. It was all perfectly thrilling. And then we drew up in front of the house and he helped me out, and my entire family had just got out of the motor and was lined up on the pavement staring at us!

"All right, are you?" he said, as coolly as if they had not been anywhere in sight. "Well, good night and good luck!" And he got into the taxicab and drove away, leaving me in the hands of the enemy.

The next morning I was sent back to school. They never gave me a chance to explain, for mother went into hysterics, after accusing me of having men dangling around waiting at every corner. They had to have a doctor, and things were awful.

The only person who said anything was Sis. She came to my room that night when I was in bed, and stood looking down at me. She was very angry, but there was a sort of awe in her eyes.

"My hat's off to you, Barbara," she said. "Where in the world do you pick them all up? Things must have changed at school since I was there."

"I'm sick to death of the other sex," I replied languidly. "It's no punishment to send me away. I need a little piece and quiet." And I did.