te invisible scrolls upon the bar. "I--did
you happen to see--my--the lady I married?" He had been embarrassed at
first, but when he finished he was glaring a challenge which shifted the
disquiet to Sam's manner.

"No. I was tendin' bar all evenin'--and she didn't come in here."

Ford glanced behind him at the sound of the door opening, saw that it
was only Bill, and leaned over the bar for greater secrecy, lowering his
voice as well.

"Did you happen to hear who she was?"

Sam stared and shook his head.

"Don't you know anything about her at all--where she came from--and why,
and where she went?"

Sam backed involuntarily. Ford's tone made it a crime either to know
these things or to be guilty of ignorance; which, Sam could not
determine. Sam was of the sleek, oily-haired type of young men, with
pimples and pale eyes and a predilection for gum and gossip. He was
afraid of Ford and he showed it.

"That's just what (no offense, Ford--I ain't responsible) that's what
everybody's wondering. Nobody seems to know. They kinda hoped you'd
explain--"

"Sure!" Ford's tone was growing extremely ominous. "I'll explain a lot
of things--if I hear any gabbling going on about my affairs." He was
seized then with an uncomfortable feeling that the words were mere
puerile blustering and turned away from the bar in disgust.

In disgust he pulled open the door, flinched before the blast of wind
and snow which smote him full in the face and blinded him, and went out
again into the storm. The hotel porch was a bleak place, with snow six
inches deep and icy boards upon which a man might easily slip and break
a bone or two, and with a whine overhead as the wind sucked under the
roof. Ford stood there so long that his feet began to tingle. He was not
thinking; he was merely feeling the feeble struggles of a newborn
desire to be something and do something worth while--a desire which
manifested itself chiefly in bitterness against himself as he was, and
in a mental nausea against the life he had been content to live.

The mystery of his marriage was growing from a mere untoward incident of
a night's carouse into a baffling thing which hung over him like an
impending doom. He was not the sort of man who marries easily. It seemed
incredible that he could really have done it; more incredible that he
could have done it and then have wiped the slate of his memory clean;
with the crowning impossibility that a strange young woman could come