"Jolly him a little, too," said----can I write it?--Mrs. Beecher. "Tell him he's the greatest thing in the world. That will help some. He's vain, you know, awfully vain. I expect he's written a lot of piffle." Had they listened they would have heard a low, dry sob, wrung from my tortured heart. But Mrs. Beecher had started a vibrator, and my anguished cry was lost. "Well," said Mrs. Patten, "Will has gone down to let him out, I expect he'll attack him. He's got a vile temper. I'll sit with you till he comes back, if you don't mind. I'm feeling nervous." It was indeed painful to recall the next half hour. I must tell the truth however. They discussed us, especially mother, who had not called. They said that we thought we were the whole summer colony, although every one was afraid of mother's tongue, and nobody would marry Leila, except Carter Brooks, and he was poor and no prospects. And that I was an incorrigible, and carried on something ghastly, and was going to be put in a convent. I became justly furious and was about to step out and tell them a few plain facts, when somebody hammered at the door and then came in. It was Mr. Patten. "He's gone!" he said. "Well, he won't go far, in bathing trunks," said Mrs. Beecher. "That's just it. His bathing trunks are there." "Well, he won't go far without them!" "He's gone so far I can't locate him." I heard Mrs. Beecher get up. "Are you in earnest, Will?" she said. "Do you mean that he has gone without a stitch of clothes, and can't be found?" Mrs. Patten gave a sort of screech. "You don't think--oh Will, he's so temperamental. You don't think he's drowned himself?" "No such luck," said Mrs. Beecher, in a cold tone. I hated her for it. True, he had deceived me. He was not as I had thought him. In our two conversations he had not mentioned his wife, leaving me to believe him free to love "where he listed," as the poet says. "There are a few clues," said Mr. Patten. "He got out by means of a wire hairpin, for one thing. And he took the manuscript with him, which he'd hardly have done if he meant to drown himself. Or even if, as we fear, he had no pockets. He has smoked a lot of cigarettes out of a candy box, which I did not supply him, and he left behind a bath towel that does not, I think, belong to us." "I should think he would have worn it," said Mrs. Beecher, in a scornful tone. "Here's the bath towel," Mr. Patten went on. "You may recognize the initials. I don't." "B. P. A.," said Mrs. Beecher. "Look here, don't they call that--that flibbertigibbet next door 'Barbara'?" "The little devil!" said Mr. Patten, in a raging tone. "She let him out, and of course he's done no work on the play or anything. I'd like to choke her." Nobody spoke then, and my heart beat fast and hard. I leave it to anybody, how they'd like to be shut in a closet and threatened with a violent death from without. Would or would they not ever be the same person afterwords?