“I have indeed!” she retorted with firmly compressed lips.  “That is, if it is what you call a case for a man to promise to marry a woman and then in the end refuse to do so.”

“Of course it is!” answered Tutt.  “But why on earth wouldn’t he?”

“He found out I had been divorced,” she explained.  “Up to that time everything had been lovely.  You see he thought I was a widow.”

“Ah!”

Mr. Tutt experienced another pang of resentment against mankind in general.

“I had a leading part in one of the season’s successes on Broadway,” she continued miserably.  “But when Mr. Oaklander promised to marry me I left the stage; and now—­I have nothing!”

“Poor child!” sighed Tutt.

He would have liked to take her in his arms and comfort her, but he always kept the door into the outer office open on principle.

“You know, Mr. Oaklander is the pastor of St. Lukes-Over-the-Way,” said Mrs. Allison.  “I thought that maybe rather than have any publicity he might do a little something for me.”

“I suppose you’ve got something in the way of evidence, haven’t you?  Letters or photographs or something?” inquired Tutt, reverting absent-mindedly to his more professional manner.

“No,” she answered.  “We never wrote to one another.  And when we went out it was usually in the evening.  I don’t suppose half a dozen people have ever seen us together.”

“That’s awkward!” meditated Tutt, “if he denies it.”

“Of course he will deny it!”

“You can’t tell.  He may not.”

“Oh, yes, he will!  Why, he even refuses to admit that he ever met me!” declared Mrs. Allison indignantly.

Now, to Tutt’s credit be it said that neither at this point nor at any other did any suspicion of Mrs. Allison’s sincerity enter his mind.  For the first time in his professional existence he accepted what a lady client told him at its face value.  Indeed he felt that no one, not even a clergyman, could help loving so miraculous a woman, or that loving her one could refrain from marrying her save for some religious or other permanent obstacle He was sublimely, ecstatically happy in the mere thought that he, Tutt, might be of help to such a celestial being, and he desired no reward other than the privilege of being her willing slave and of reading her gratitude in those melting, misty eyes.

Mrs. Allison went away just before lunch time, leaving her telephone number, her handkerchief, a pungent odor of violet talc, and a disconsolate but highly excited Tutt.  Never, at any rate within twenty years, had he felt so young.  Life seemed tinged with every color of the spectrum.  The radiant fact was that he would—­he simply had to—­see her again.  What he might do for her professionally—­all that aspect of the affair was shoved far into the background of his mind.  His only thought was how to get her back into his office at the earliest possible moment.