For the first time in their two years' acquaintance he saw her visibly embarrassed. And her explanation scarcely explained.

"I—I was with the Lassleys in New York, you know; I went to the steamer to see them off. Mr. Lassley showed me his telegram to you after he had written it."

They had come to the little coffees, and the other members of Miss Craigmiles's party had risen and gone rearward to the sleeping-car. Ballard, more mystified than he had been at the Boston moment when Lassley's wire had found him, was still too considerate to make his companion a reluctant source of further information. Moreover, Mr. Lester Wingfield was weighing upon him more insistently than the mysteries. In times past Miss Craigmiles had made him the target for certain little arrows of confidence: he gave her an opportunity to do it again.

"Tell me about Mr. Wingfield," he suggested. "Is he truly Jack Forsyth's successor?"

"How can you question it?" she retorted gayly. "Some time—not here or now—I will tell you all about it."

"'Some time,'" he repeated. "Is it always going to be 'some time'? You have been calling me your friend for a good while, but there has always been a closed door beyond which you have never let me penetrate. And it is not my fault, as you intimated a few minutes ago. Why is it? Is it because I'm only one of many? Or is it your attitude toward all men?"

She was knotting her veil and her eyes were downcast when she answered him.

"A closed door? There is, indeed, my dear friend: two hands, one dead and one still living, closed it for us. It may be opened some time"—the phrase persisted, and she could not get away from it—"and then you will be sorry. Let us go back to the sleeping-car. I want you to meet the others." Then with a quick return to mockery: "Only I suppose you will not care to meet Mr. Wingfield?"

He tried to match her mood; he was always trying to keep up with her kaleidoscopic changes of front.

"Try me, and see," he laughed. "I guess I can stand it, if he can."

And a few minutes later he had been presented to the other members of the sight-seeing party; had taken Mrs. Van Bryck's warm fat hand of welcome and Dosia's cool one, and was successfully getting himself contradicted at every other breath by the florid-faced old campaigner, who, having been a major of 

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