this aged man on shipboard. If she
had only realized--she even might have dressed him up, she speculated,
and had him at her house for dinner! She could have introduced him to
her climbing friends as a musician of great eminence, abroad (she
remembered with regret, now, that he really played the flute
magnificently--so everyone on shipboard had exclaimed), and made them
envious to a degree. But now that she had started on this task, she
would not falter. She assured herself, indeed, that duty as a citizen
demanded that she should _not_ falter.

"Yes," she said to him, with real regret, "I certainly must see your
daughter; but I am glad first to explain to you--"

"The pleasure," said the courtly flute-player, "is mutual, Madame. May
I ask you what you must explain?"

Mrs. Vanderlyn now summoned to her face a look of sympathy, lugubrious
and as sincere as she could make it. "It will be a blow, Herr
Kreutzer."

The old man was uneasy, but he hid it as best he could, under a most
careful, unremitting courtesy. "A blow, Madame?"

She did not speak, at once, but stood there looking at him with wide
eyes which she was very careful to make sad. It made him madly
nervous.

"Well, I am ready," he protested, after the delay became intolerable.
"I beg of you do not delay."

"First," said Mrs. Vanderlyn, not going to the heart of the unhappy
matter, as his whole soul begged of her to do, but paltering with an
unnecessary explanation, "you must understand the arrangement of my
house. My son's room adjoins my own; then comes the little boudoir I
assigned to Anna; then--"

"Yes, Madame," said Kreutzer, unable to endure this any longer, "but
what of that? You said--"

"I am positive that this afternoon no one was near those rooms but
Anna."

Kreutzer was in agony. "Go on, Madame," he said, imploringly. "Do you
not see that this is torture? I cannot bear it longer."

She looked at him again, with that assumed expression of compassion,
and he could have torn her secret from her with hooked fingers, so
exasperated, so intensely agonized was he by her delays. Finally he
made a desperate, downward, begging gesture with both hands, and,
understanding, she went on:

"This afternoon my son returned from somewhere, and went into his
room. He did not come into my room to call me, as he sometimes does.
He was very quiet and it made me curious. I thought perhaps the boy
might be there suffering with some headache, or something, wh