"Yes, too late. I had, unfortunately, given his hat to another gentleman who made a trifling mistake in thinking it to be his own." Suddenly my manners returned to me. "Will you come in?" "Come in? No! You have given the hat to another man? A trifling mistake! He calls it a trifling mistake!"--addressing the heavens, obscured though they were by the thickness of several ceilings. "Oh, what _shall_ I do?" She began to wring her hands, and when a woman does that what earthly hope is there for the man who looks on? "Don't do that!" I implored. "I'll find the hat." At a word from her, for all she had trampled on me, I would gladly have gone to Honolulu in search of a hat-pin. "The gentleman left me his card. With your permission I will go at once in search of him." "I have a cab outside. Give me the address." "I refuse to permit you to go alone." "You have absolutely nothing to say in regard to where I shall or shall not go." "In this one instance. I shall withhold the address." How her eyes blazed! "Oh, it is easily to be seen that you do not trust me." I was utterly discouraged. "I did not imply that," with the least bit of softening. "Certainly I would trust you. But...." "Well?"--as laughingly as I could. "I must be the one to take out that letter,"--decidedly. "I offer to bring you the hat untouched," I replied. "I insist on going." "Very well; we shall go together; under no other circumstances. This is a common courtesy that I would show to a perfect stranger." I put on my hat, took up the Frenchman's card and tile, and bowed her gravely into the main hallway. We did not speak on the way down to the street. We entered the cab in silence, and went rumbling off southwest. When the monotony became positively unbearable I spoke. "I regret to force myself upon you." No reply. "It must be a very important letter." "To no one but myself,"--with extreme frigidity. "His father ought to wring his neck,"--thinking of Toddy-One-Boy. "Sir, he is my brother!" "I beg your pardon." It seemed that I wasn't getting on very well. We bumped across the Broadway tracks. Once or twice our shoulders touched, and the thrill I experienced was as painful as it was rapturous. What was in a letter that she should go to this extreme to recall it? A heat-flash of jealousy went over me. She had written to some other fellow; for there always is some other fellow, hang him!... And then a grand idea came into my erstwhile stupid head. Here she was, alone with me in a cab. It was the opportunity of a lifetime. I could force her to listen to my explanation. "I received your note," I began. "It was cruel and without justice." Her chin went up a degree. "The worst criminal is not condemned without a hearing, and I have had none." No perceptible movement. "We are none of us infallible in keeping appointments. We are liable to make mistakes occasionally. Had I known that Tuesday night was the night of the dance I'd have crossed to Jersey in a rowboat."