r which hung the charm of
ripe old portraits and wainscoted walls. Furnishings of unostentatious
elegance made the place a delight. We passed into a large library where
a wide hearth dispensed the cheer of blazing logs and our feet sunk deep
in Persian rugs.

Yet even here, although instinctively hospitable, my host was plainly
immersed in thoughts of coal and timber, for as soon as he had done the
honors he plunged me into a litter of statistics.

I, poor business man that I was, had, time after time, to force my mind
back from its undisciplined straying. As he talked of coal veins, I
would find myself thinking of coral reefs. When he enlarged upon
advances in timber tracts I would be seeing in my memory a circle of
mahogany-skinned pigmies squatting silently about a portrait spiked to a
sailor's chest with a pair of Damascus daggers.

At last Weighborne began sorting through the papers for some misplaced
and necessary memorandum. He crossed the room to a desk at one corner
which he found locked, and his ejaculation was one of deep annoyance.

"My wife has locked the desk and Heaven only knows where she has put the
key," he complained. "I'll have to call the Country Club and ask her."

His words must have carried to the next room, for at once a voice
answered. It was a richly musical contralto, and at its first syllable
my heart stood still, and the room commenced to whirl about me. I had
never heard it and yet I _had_ heard it--singing in a wilderness of
coral and orchids. Surely after all the big, little doctor was right, I
was becoming a lunatic.

"Billy," called the voice, "you needn't 'phone. I'm here. I'll unlock
it."

My host turned in surprise and walked over to the door.

"Hullo, Frances!" he exclaimed. "Didn't you go to the Club?"

"I had a headache," replied the voice. "I sent the others off, and
stayed at home. I'll come in just a moment."

I stood waiting, my pulses pounding turbulently. Had my host not been
just then dedicated to a single idea he must have noticed my pallor and
wondered at the fascination with which I came to my feet and stood
gazing at the door.

And as I gazed she appeared on the threshold, the blaze from the logs
lighting her and throwing a nimbus about her hair of gold and honey. I
placed both my hands on the top of the table and braced myself as a man
may do when the executioner whispers the warning "ready!"

She might have stepped from the picture herself. Again she wa