WITH his letter in his hand Dennis Vidal stood and smiled at her. “ What in the world has your dear Tony ‘got,’ and what is he to say? ”

“To say? Something to his wife, who appears to have lashed¹ herself into an extraordinary state.”

The young man’s face fell. “What sort of a state?”

“A strange discouragement about herself. She’s depressed² and frightened she thinks she’s sinking.”

Dennis looked grave. “ Poor little lady what a bore for us! I remember her perfectly³.”

“She of course remembers you,” Rose said. “ She takes the friendliest interest in your being here.”

“That’s most kind of her in her condition.”

“Oh, her condition,” Rose returned, “ isn’t quite so bad as she thinks.”

“I see.” Dennis hesitated. “And that’s what Mr. Bream’s to tell her.”

“That’s a part of it.” Rose glanced at the docu ment he had brought to her; it was in its enve lope, and he tapped it a little impatiently on his left finger-tips. What she said, however, had no reference to it. “ She’s haunted with a morbid⁴ alarm on the subject, of all things, of his marry ing again.”

“If she should die? She wants him not to? ” Dennis asked.

“She wants him not to.” Rose paused a moment. “ She wants to have been the only one.”

He reflected, slightly embarrassed with this peep into a situation that but remotely concerned him. “Well, I suppose that’s the way women often feel.”

“I daresay it is.” The girl’s gravity gave the gleam of a smile. “ I daresay it’s the way I should.”

Dennis Vidal, at this, simply seized her and kissed her. “ You needn’t be afraid you’ll be the only one! ”

His embrace had been the work of a few seconds, and she had made no movement to escape from it; but she looked at him as if to convey that the extreme high spirits it betrayed were perhaps just a trifle mistimed. “ That’s what I recommended him,” she dropped, “ to say to Julia.”

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