d
conveyed that suggestion.

Sure enough, at twenty minutes past one the door of the reception-room
opened, and a tall, robust young man with a cane and an English hat and
ulster looked in expectantly. "Ah--ha!" he exclaimed, "I thought if I
came early I might have good luck. And how are you to-day, Miss
Kronborg?"

Thea was sitting in the window chair. At her left elbow there was a
table, and upon this table the young man sat down, holding his hat and
cane in his hand, loosening his long coat so that it fell back from his
shoulders. He was a gleaming, florid young fellow. His hair, thick and
yellow, was cut very short, and he wore a closely trimmed beard, long
enough on the chin to curl a little. Even his eyebrows were thick and
yellow, like fleece. He had lively blue eyes--Thea looked up at them
with great interest as he sat chatting and swinging his foot
rhythmically. He was easily familiar, and frankly so. Wherever people
met young Ottenburg, in his office, on shipboard, in a foreign hotel or
railway compartment, they always felt (and usually liked) that artless
presumption which seemed to say, "In this case we may waive formalities.
We really haven't time. This is to-day, but it will soon be to-morrow,
and then we may be very different people, and in some other country." He
had a way of floating people out of dull or awkward situations, out of
their own torpor or constraint or discouragement. It was a marked
personal talent, of almost incalculable value in the representative of a
great business founded on social amenities. Thea had liked him yesterday
for the way in which he had picked her up out of herself and her German
grammar for a few exciting moments.

"By the way, will you tell me your first name, please? Thea? Oh, then
you ARE a Swede, sure enough! I thought so. Let me call you Miss Thea,
after the German fashion. You won't mind? Of course not!" He usually
made his assumption of a special understanding seem a tribute to the
other person and not to himself.

"How long have you been with Bowers here? Do you like the old grouch? So
do I. I've come to tell him about a new soprano I heard at Bayreuth.
He'll pretend not to care, but he does. Do you warble with him? Have you
anything of a voice? Honest? You look it, you know. What are you going
in for, something big? Opera?"

Thea blushed crimson. "Oh, I'm not going in for anything. I'm trying to
learn to sing at funerals."

Ottenburg leaned forward. His e