Do you think this is a joke? They've
tried to put me out of the way twice. If you breathe a word of this to
Mifflin he'll warn the other two."

"You're afraid to have Mr. Mifflin know you broke into his shop," she
taunted.

"You can think what you like."

"I won't promise you anything!" she burst out. Then her face altered.
The defiant little line of her mouth bent and her strength seemed to
run out at each end of that pathetic curve. "Yes, I will," she said.
"I suppose that's fair. I couldn't tell Mr. Mifflin, anyway. I'd be
ashamed to tell him how you frightened me. I think you're hateful. I
came over here thinking I was going to have such a good time, and
you've spoilt it all!"

For one terrible moment he thought she was going to cry. But he
remembered having seen heroines cry in the movies, and knew it was only
done when there was a table and chair handy.

"Miss Chapman," he said, "I'm as sorry as a man can be. But I swear I
did what I did in all honesty. If I'm wrong in this, you need never
speak to me again. If I'm wrong, you--you can tell your father to take
his advertising away from the Grey-Matter Company. I can't say more
than that."

And, to do him justice, he couldn't. It was the supreme sacrifice.

She let him out of the front door without another word.

Chapter XII

Aubrey Determines to give Service that's Different

Seldom has a young man spent a more desolate afternoon than Aubrey on
that Sunday. His only consolation was that twenty minutes after he had
left the bookshop he saw a taxi drive up (he was then sitting gloomily
at his bedroom window) and Titania enter it and drive away. He
supposed that she had gone to join the party in Larchmont, and was glad
to know that she was out of what he now called the war zone. For the
first time on record, O. Henry failed to solace him. His pipe tasted
bitter and brackish. He was eager to know what Weintraub was doing,
but did not dare make any investigations in broad daylight. His idea
was to wait until dark. Observing the Sabbath calm of the streets, and
the pageant of baby carriages wheeling toward Thackeray Boulevard, he
wondered again whether he had thrown away this girl's friendship for a
merely imaginary suspicion.

At last he could endure his cramped bedroom no longer. Downstairs
someone was dolefully playing a flute, most horrible of all tortures to
tightened nerves. While her lodgers were at church the tireless M