e he had stolen sugar at eight, when he was reassured by the
clerk's merely saying in a voice like a wink. "Telephone call for you
last night, Mr. Crowe."

_Nancy!_

With a horrible effort to keep impassive, "Yes? Who was it?"

"Party didn't leave a name."

"Oh. When?"

"'Bout 'leven o'clock."

"And she didn't leave any message?" Then Oliver turned pink at having
betrayed himself so easily.

"No-o--_she_ didn't." The clerk's eyelid drooped a trifle. Those collegy
looking boys were certainly hell with women.

"Oh, well--" with a vast attempt to seem careless. "Thanks. Where's the
'phone?"

"Over there" and Oliver followed the direction of the jerked thumb to
shut himself up in a booth with his heart, apparently, bent upon doing
queer interpretative dances and his mind full of all the most apologetic
words in or out of the dictionary. "Hello. Hello. _Is this Nancy_?"

"This is Mrs. S. R. Ellicott." The voice seems extremely detached.

"Oh, good morning, Mrs. Ellicott. This is Oliver--Oliver Crowe, you
know. Is Nancy there?"

Nor does it appear inclined toward lengthy conversation--the voice at
the other end. "No."

"Well, when will she be in? I've got to take the five o'clock train Mrs.
Ellicott--I've simply got to--I may lose my job if I don't--but I've got
to talk to her first--I've got to explain--"

"There can be very little good, I think, in your talking to her Mr.
Crowe. She has told me that you both consider the engagement at an end."

"But that's impossible, Mrs. Ellicott--that's too absurd" Oliver felt
too much as if he were fighting for life against something invisible to
be careful about his words. "I know we quarrelled last night--but it
was all my fault, I didn't mean anything--I was going to call her up the
first thing this morning but you see, they wouldn't let me out--"

Then he stopped with a grim realization of just what it was that he had
said. There was a long fateful pause from the other end of the wire.

"I'm afraid I don't quite understand, Mr. Crowe."

"They wouldn't let me out. I was--er--detained--ah--kept in."

"Detained?" The inflection is politely inquisitive.

"Yes, detained. You see--I--you--oh dammit, I was in jail." This time
the pause that follows had to Oliver much of the quality of that little
deadly hush that will silence all earth and sky in the moment before
Last Judgment. Then--

"_In jail_," said the voice with an accent of utter finality.

"Yes--yes--oh