nown how much
I had hoped from seeing her until I learned that she was out of town. I
hung up the receiver, almost dizzy with disappointment, and it was fully
five minutes before I thought of calling up again and asking if she was
within telephone reach. It seemed she was down on the bay staying with
the Samuel Forbeses.

Sammy Forbes! It was a name to conjure with just then. In the old days
at college I had rather flouted him, but now I was ready to take him to
my heart. I remembered that he had always meant well, anyhow, and that
he was explosively generous. I called him up.

"By the fumes of gasoline!" he said, when I told him who I was.
"Blakeley, the Fount of Wisdom against Woman! Blakeley, the Great
Unkissed! Welcome to our city!"

Whereupon he proceeded to urge me to come down to the Shack, and to say
that I was an agreeable surprise, because four times in two hours
youths had called up to ask if Alison West was stopping with him, and
to suggest that they had a vacant day or two. "Oh--Miss West!" I shouted
politely. There was a buzzing on the line. "Is she there?" Sam had no
suspicions. Was not I in his mind always the Great Unkissed?--which
sounds like the Great Unwashed and is even more of a reproach. He asked
me down promptly, as I had hoped, and thrust aside my objections.

"Nonsense," he said. "Bring yourself. The lady that keeps my
boarding-house is calling to me to insist. You remember Dorothy, don't
you, Dorothy Browne? She says unless you have lost your figure you
can wear my clothes all right. All you need here is a bathing suit for
daytime and a dinner coat for evening."

"It sounds cool," I temporized. "If you are sure I won't put you
out--very well, Sam, since you and your wife are good enough. I have a
couple of days free. Give my love to Dorothy until I can do it myself."

Sam met me himself and drove me out to the Shack, which proved to be a
substantial house overlooking the water. On the way he confided to me
that lots of married men thought they were contented when they were
merely resigned, but that it was the only life, and that Sam, Junior,
could swim like a duck. Incidentally, he said that Alison was his wife's
cousin, their respective grandmothers having, at proper intervals,
married the same man, and that Alison would lose her good looks if she
was not careful.

"I say she's worried, and I stick to it," he said, as he threw the lines
to a groom and prepared to get out. "You know he