"Didn't think of any of my sensations, did you?" Anthony asked caustically. "As a matter of fact--no, I didn't!" muttered Johnson Boller, with another great shiver. "What do your confounded sensations matter, anyway? This whole affair is your fault, not mine! You deserve whatever you get--I don't! You've got nobody in the world to worry over you, but I've got a _wife_, Anthony!" "You have mentioned it before." "And I'm likely to mention it again!" said Mr. Boller savagely. "You know, Anthony, I'm about through with this thing! I'm a nervous man, and I can stand about so much suffering of my own, but I don't see the idea of taking on yours as well. And what is more, this thing of introducing this girl as my wife is----" "Well? What is it?" Mary herself asked very crisply, appearing in her disconcertingly and silent fashion. Johnson Boller smiled feebly. "It's very flattering in some ways, Miss--Miss Dalton, but for a man like me, who loves his wife, you know, and all that sort of thing----" His voice thinned out and died before the decidedly cold light in Mary's eye. It seemed to Johnson Boller that she had a low opinion of himself; and when she looked at Anthony he noted that she had a low opinion of Anthony as well. "Have you settled it yet!" she snapped. "The--er--means of getting you out?" "Is there anything more important?" "Ah--decidedly not," Anthony said wearily. "Several times, I think, we've attempted a council of war, and we may as well try it again. There will be no interruptions this time, I think, and if we all put our minds to it----" That was all. As on several other similar occasion, he halted because of sounds from the doorway. It seemed to Anthony, indeed, that he had heard Wilkins muttering at the telephone a moment ago, too; and now the faithful one was at the door and working over the latch. Mary's ears were preternaturally keen, too; Mary had acquired a way of standing erect and poising every time sounds came from that door. She did it now, remaining on tiptoe until the oddest little giggle brought Anthony and Johnson Boller to their feet also. "That's a woman's voice!" Mary whispered. And she looked about wildly, and, since there was no hope of escape unseen by the corridor, her eyes fell upon the open door of Johnson Boller's room. Mary, with a bound that would have done credit to a young deer, was across the room, and the door clicked behind her just as Wilkins, smiling in a perturbed and mystified way, appeared to announce: "A lady, sir, who----" Then the lady had passed him, moving with a speed almost equal to Mary's own--a lovely lady, indeed, with great, flashing black eyes and black hair--a lady all life and spirit, her face suffused just now with a great joy. Wilkins, perceiving that neither gentleman protested after gazing at her for one second, backed away to regions of his own, and the spell on Johnson Boller broke and his soul found vent in one great, glad cry of: "Bee!"