om her head. There was still black on her brows
and lashes. She was very pale and her face was drawn and deeply lined.
She looked, the doctor told himself with a sinking heart, forty years
old. Her suspicious, mystified stare cleared slowly.

"Pardon me," the doctor murmured, not knowing just how to address her
here before the porters, "I came up from the opera. I merely wanted to
say good-night to you."

Without speaking, still looking incredulous, she pushed him into the
elevator. She kept her hand on his arm while the cage shot up, and she
looked away from him, frowning, as if she were trying to remember or
realize something. When the cage stopped, she pushed him out of the
elevator through another door, which a maid opened, into a square hall.
There she sank down on a chair and looked up at him.

"Why didn't you let me know?" she asked in a hoarse voice.

Archie heard himself laughing the old, embarrassed laugh that seldom
happened to him now. "Oh, I wanted to take my chance with you, like
anybody else. It's been so long, now!"

She took his hand through her thick glove and her head dropped forward.
"Yes, it has been long," she said in the same husky voice, "and so much
has happened."

"And you are so tired, and I am a clumsy old fellow to break in on you
to-night," the doctor added sympathetically. "Forgive me, this time." He
bent over and put his hand soothingly on her shoulder. He felt a strong
shudder run through her from head to foot.

Still bundled in her fur coat as she was, she threw both arms about him
and hugged him. "Oh, Dr. Archie, DR. ARCHIE,"--she shook him,--"don't
let me go. Hold on, now you're here," she laughed, breaking away from
him at the same moment and sliding out of her fur coat. She left it for
the maid to pick up and pushed the doctor into the sitting-room, where
she turned on the lights. "Let me LOOK at you. Yes; hands, feet, head,
shoulders--just the same. You've grown no older. You can't say as much
for me, can you?"

She was standing in the middle of the room, in a white silk shirtwaist
and a short black velvet skirt, which somehow suggested that they had
'cut off her petticoats all round about.' She looked distinctly clipped
and plucked. Her hair was parted in the middle and done very close to
her head, as she had worn it under the wig. She looked like a fugitive,
who had escaped from something in clothes caught up at hazard. It
flashed across Dr. Archie that she was running a