Wilfred had never spoken to her. She had a husband. The pair of them excited a warm interest in Wilfred because they were so young. A mere boy and girl and they initiated so much further than he was! Once he had had a glimpse into their room as he passed the door. It was distressingly bare; nothing but a bed. Evidently one of these imprudent runaway matches. He, considering himself a prudent person, was charmed by imprudence in others. Yet Bella Billings the landlady, hinted that already things were not going well in the front room. The husband, a sulky-looking blond lad with an unwholesome complexion, was a telegrapher who worked all night, and slept in the daytime. Thus the little wife was thrown much into Bella’s company. A well-meaning creature, Bella, but rabid in her emotions; hardly the best advisor for a discontented girl wife. Thus Wilfred’s thoughts as he held his head close to the water to avoid a noisy splashing. As he straightened up, groping for his towel, a murmur of voices from the front room reached his ears. It came from the direction of the bed. Wilfred became very still, and his heart beat faster. What did a boy-husband and a girl wife say to each other in bed? No words reached his ears; but the sense of the murmuring was very clear; the girl beseeching, the lad’s surly voice denying. Wilfred, blushing all over, retreated into his main room with the towel about his head. He was filled with a delighted astonishment. He had never guessed that the sort of girl a man aches for might in turn ask. He had supposed that such a one merely suffered a man to love her out of her kindness. The discovery that a woman might be both desirable and desiring seemed to change the color of life. He silently addressed the front room: “Oh, if you were mine!” That was all. A day or two later, as Bella had foretold, the establishment in the front room suddenly broke up. The young telegrapher went off to take a job in the Southwest, while his wife returned to live with her mother in a Connecticut town. Wilfred did not forget her. In his dreams he invited her. The fact that she had been married lent her an added seductiveness. He led Bella on to talk of her. It transpired that they kept up a correspondence. Her name was Mildred. * * * * *