ite, refined,
and young.

"I did not send in my name," she said, when she saw me glancing down for
the card Hawes usually puts on my table. "It was advice I wanted, and
I--I did not think the name would matter."

She was more composed, I think, when she found me considerably older
than herself. I saw her looking furtively at the graying places over my
ears. I am only thirty-five, as far as that goes, but my family,
although it keeps its hair, turns gray early--a business asset but a
social handicap.

"Won't you sit down?" I asked, pushing out a chair, so that she would
face the light, while I remained in shadow. Every doctor and every
lawyer knows that trick. "As far as the name goes, perhaps you would
better tell me the trouble first. Then, if I think it indispensable, you
can tell me."

She acquiesced to this and sat for a moment silent, her gaze absently on
the windows of the building across. In the morning light my first
impression was verified. Only too often the raising of a woman's veil in
my office reveals the ravages of tears, or rouge, or dissipation. My new
client turned fearlessly to the window an unlined face, with a clear
skin, healthily pale. From where I sat, her profile was beautiful, in
spite of its drooping suggestion of trouble; her first embarrassment
gone, she had forgotten herself and was intent on her errand.

"I hardly know how to begin," she said, "but suppose"--slowly--"suppose
that a man, a well-known man, should leave home without warning, not
taking any clothes except those he wore, and saying he was coming home
to dinner, and he--he--"

She stopped as if her voice had failed her.

"And he does not come?" I prompted.

She nodded, fumbling for her handkerchief in her bag.

"How long has he been gone?" I asked. I had heard exactly the same thing
before, but to leave a woman like that, hardly more than a girl, and
lovely!

"Ten days."

"I should think it ought to be looked into," I said decisively, and got
up. Somehow I couldn't sit quietly. A lawyer who is worth anything is
always a partisan, I suppose, and I never hear of a man deserting his
wife that I am not indignant, the virtuous scorn of the unmarried man,
perhaps. "But you will have to tell me more than that. Did this
gentleman have any bad habits? That is, did he--er--drink?"

"Not to excess. He had been forbidden anything of that sort by his
physician. He played bridge for money, but I--believe he was rather
lucky."