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!