o exist a tacit understanding
that, with the death of Drummond, the cloud that had shadowed the career
of Sara Law had lifted, while her renunciation of her public career had
left her with a future of glorified serenity and assured happiness. By
common consent, with an almost superstitious awe, they begged the
question of the shadowed and inexplicable past--left the dead past to
bury itself, bestowing all their fatuous concern with the to-day of
rejoicing and the to-morrow of splendid promise.

Toward noon they parted ashore, each taking a taxicab to his lodgings.
The understanding was that they were to dine together--all three,
Whitaker promising for his wife--upon the morrow.

At six that evening, returning to his rooms to dress, Whitaker found
another note awaiting him, in a handwriting that his heart recognized
with a sensation of wretched apprehension.

He dared not trust himself to read it in the public hall. It was agony
to wait through the maddeningly deliberate upward flight of the
elevator. When he at length attained to the privacy of his own
apartment, he was sweating like a panic-stricken horse. He could hardly
control his fingers to open the envelope. He comprehended its contents
with difficulty, half blinded by a swimming mist of foreboding.

"MY DEAR: I find my strength unequal to the strain of seeing you
to-night. Indeed, I am so worn out and nerve-racked that I have had
to consult my physician. He orders me immediately to a sanatorium,
to rest for a week or two. Don't worry about me. I shan't fail to
let you know as soon as I feel strong enough to see you. Forgive
me. I love you dearly.

"MARY."

The paper slipped from Whitaker's trembling hand and fluttered unheeded
to the floor. He sprang to the telephone and presently had the Waldorf
on the wire; it was true, he learned: Mrs. Whitaker had registered at
the hotel in the morning, and had left at four in the afternoon. He was
refused information as to whether she had left a forwarding address for
her mail.

He wrote her immediately, and perhaps not altogether wisely, under
stress of distraction, sending the letter by special delivery in care of
the hotel. It was returned him in due course of time, embellished with a
pencilled memorandum to the effect that Mrs. Whitaker had left no
address.

He communicated at once with Ember, promptly enlisting his willing
services. But after several days of earnest investiga