e address behind her.

For the same reason she took the silver thimble which stood on the
scrap of paper. On its rim she read the inscription, "H.T. from H.S."
but she made no attempt to unravel the romance behind it. She merely
slipped the scrawl and the thimble into the pocket of her jacket, and
stood up.

She took no farewells. To do so would have unnerved her. On the
landing outside her door she listened for a possible sound of the
prince's breathing, but the house was still. In the lower hall she
resisted the impulse to slip into the library and kiss the place where
she had kissed his feet on the memorable morning when her hand had
been on his brow. "That won't help me any," were the prosaic words
with which she put the suggestion away from her. If the little mermaid
was to leap over the ship's side and dissolve into foam the best thing
she could do was to leap.

The door no longer held secrets. She had locked it and unlocked it a
thousand times. Feeling for the chain in the darkness she slipped it
out of its socket; she drew back the bolt; she turned the key. Her
fingers found the two little brass knobs, pressing this one that way,
and that one this way. The door rolled softly as she turned the
handle.

Over the threshold she passed into a world of silence, darkness,
electricity, and stars. She closed the door noiselessly. She went down
the steps.

Chapter XXI

Having the choice between going southward either by Fifth Avenue or by
Madison Avenue, Letty took the former for the reason that there were
no electric cars crashing through it, so that she would be less
observed. It seemed to her important to get as far from East
Sixty-seventh Street as possible before letting a human glance take
note of her personality, even as a drifting silhouette.

In this she was fortunate. For the hour between one and two in the
early morning this part of Fifth Avenue was unusually empty. There was
not a pedestrian, and only a rare motor car. When one of the latter
flashed by she shrank into the shadow of a great house, lest some eye
of miraculous discernment should light on her. It seemed to her that
all New York must be ready to read her secret, and be on the watch to
turn her back.

She didn't know why she was going southward rather than northward,
except that southward lay the Brooklyn Bridge, and beyond the Brooklyn
Bridge lay Beehive Valley, and within Beehive Valley the Excelsior
Studio, and in the Excelsio