boy the first woman he had seen, and to
my ascetic mind because a woman, a minx. I eyed the broken grille
regretfully and then suddenly rose and started hurriedly toward the
Manor, the new thought drumming in my mind.

A fool's mission? Perhaps, and yet I resolved to take it. I put some
things into a bag and, telling Christopher that Jerry wasn't to expect
me home that night, I caught an evening train to the city.

It was not difficult to reach her by telephone, for I found her at the
house in Washington Square. She did not recall my voice or my name,
and only when I said that I had been Jerry Benham's tutor, did she
remember. It was a personal matter, I explained, having to do with Mr.
Benham, and at that she consented to see me. I left the telephone
booth at the hotel perspiring freely, aware for the first time of the
awkwardness and delicacy of my undertaking. But I dined and changed
into my blue serge suit, one that I had bought upon the occasion of my
last visit to town, and at half past eight presented myself in the
Habberton drawing-room. In the moments before she appeared, I sat ill
at ease, my eyes taking in every detail of the well-ordered room, the
cool gray walls, the family portraits, the old-fashioned ornaments
upon table and mantel, aware, in spite of myself, that I was warm at
the collar, impatient for the interview to begin, yet fearful for it.

I was watching the folding doors at the end of the room when she
startled me by appearing silently almost at my elbow. The lights were
dim, but I could see that her face wore no smile of greeting and as I
rose she did not offer me her hand.

"Mr. Canby," she said politely, indicating a chair, "won't you sit
down?"

"Er--thanks," I said. My throat was dry. I hoped she would not make it
too difficult for me. Meanwhile I saw her eyeing me narrowly as though
the possibility had just occurred to her that I might have come to ask
for money. She waited a moment for me to speak, but I found it
difficult to begin.

"Mr. Benham sent you to me?" she asked at last very coolly.

"Er--not exactly," I stammered. "Mr. Benham did not send me, but
I--I'm here in his interest."

"Yes?"

The rising inflection on the monosyllable could hardly have been
called encouraging.

"The circumstance of our first meeting," I ventured again with an
assumption of ease that I was far from feeling--"its duration was so
brief that I feared you wouldn't remember me."

Her neck stiffe