looked toward the bed with a little twitch of her lips. “Perhaps we are related.”

[35]

“Who knows?” returned Hugh, who was longing for a cigarette.

“May I read this letter of introduction?”

“It is yours,” he answered.

Miss Frink read it attentively. “John Ogden,” she said aloud as she reached the signature. “I congratulate you on your friend. I respect John Ogden very much.”

“So he does you,” returned Hugh feebly, turning his bandaged head with a weary movement that his hostess was quick to notice.

He was wishing he had never seen John Ogden, and that he was back, a free Bolshevist without the headache, packing boxes with both hands in a basement, to pay for his hall bedroom and hot dogs.

Miss Frink, who had sent the nurse out of the room when she entered, went back to the bedside, and opened a package she had brought in with her. Hugh’s one violet eye rolled toward her listlessly. It suddenly brightened. Miss Frink had never looked so shame-faced in her life.

“You see, I went out and bought them myself,[36] and not having the least idea what you liked I told the man to give me a variety.” The handsome box she opened held a number of packages of cigarettes, all of a different brand, and the lover-like smile Hugh gave her as his eager right hand shot out made color come up in the guilty face.

[36]

“Perhaps the nurse won’t let you, I don’t know,” she said hurriedly—“here, let me strike the match for you, it is awful to have only one hand!”

The cigarette was lighted, Miss Frink called the nurse, and fled to the study where her secretary was busily sorting papers at his desk. He was a smooth-shaven man in his late thirties, immaculate in appearance, his retreating hair giving him a very high forehead, and his small mouth with its full lips seeming an appropriate gateway for his voice and speech which were unfortunately effeminate.

“Grim,” said Miss Frink upon her sudden entrance, “Mr. Stanwood has been 

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