“Poor Reggie!” said Mrs. Patten, “To think of him locked in there alone, and no Clothes or anything.  It’s too funny for words.”

“You’re not married to him.”

My heart stopped beating.  Was she married to him?  She was indeed.  My dream was over.  And the worst part of it was that for a married man I had done without Food or exercise and now stood in a hot closet in danger of a terrable fuss.

“No, thank Heaven!” said Mrs. Patten.  “But it was the only way to make him work.  He is a lazy dog.  But don’t worry.  We’ll feed him before he sees you.  He’s always rather tractible after he’s fed.”

Were all my dreams to go?  Would they leave nothing to my shattered ilusions?  Alas, no.

“Jolly him a little, to,” said——­can I write it?—­Mrs. Beecher.  “Tell him he’s the greatest thing in the World.  That will help some.  He’s vain, you know, awfully vain.  I expect he’s written a lot of piffle.”

Had they listened they would have heard a low, dry sob, wrung from my tortured heart.  But Mrs. Beecher had started a vibrater, and my anguished cry was lost.

“Well,” said Mrs. Patten, “Will has gone down to let him out, I expect he’ll attack him.  He’s got a vile Temper.  I’ll sit with you till he comes back, if you don’t mind.  I’m feeling nervous.”

It was indeed painful to recall the next half hour.  I must tell the truth however.  They discussed us, especialy mother, who had not called.  They said that we thought we were the whole summer Colony, although every one was afraid of mother’s tongue, and nobody would marry Leila, except Carter Brooks, and he was poor and no prospects.  And that I was an incorrigable, and carried on somthing gastly, and was going to be put in a convent.  I became justly furious and was about to step out and tell them a few plain Facts, when sombody hammered at the door and then came in.  It was Mr. Patten.

“He’s gone!” he said.

“Well, he won’t go far, in bathing trunks,” said Mrs. Beecher.

“That’s just it.  His bathing trunks are there.”

“Well, he won’t go far without them!”

“He’s gone so far I can’t locate him.”

I heard Mrs. Beecher get up.

“Are you in ernest, Will?” she said.  “Do you mean that he has gone without a Stich of clothes, and can’t be found?”

Mrs. Patten gave a sort of screach.

“You don’t think—­oh Will, he’s so tempermental.  You don’t think he’s drowned himself?”

“No such luck,” said Mrs. Beecher, in a cold tone.  I hated her for it.  True, he had decieved me.  He was not as I had thought him.  In our to conversations he had not mentioned his wife, leaveing me to beleive him free to love “where he listed,” as the poet says.

“There are a few clues,” said Mr. Patten.  “He got out by means of a wire hairpin, for one thing.  And he took the manuscript with him, which he’d hardly have done if he meant to drown himself.  Or even if, as we fear, he had no Pockets.  He has smoked a lot of cigarettes out of a candy box, which I did not supply him, and he left behind a bath towle that does not, I think, belong to us.”