Mrs. Harbinger seized the girl again by the shoulder, and this time with an indignation evidently personal as well as moral. "Have you dared to ask a strange man to meet you at my house, May Calthorpe?" The other cringed, and writhed her shoulder out of the clutch of her hostess. "Of course not," she responded, taking in her turn with instant readiness the tone of just resentment. "He wrote me that he would be here." The other regarded May in silence a moment, apparently studying her in the light of these new revelations of character. Then she turned and walked thoughtfully to a chair, leaving May to sit down again on the sofa by which they had been standing. Mrs. Harbinger was evidently going over in her mind the list of possible authors who might be at her afternoon tea that day. "Then 'Love in a Cloud' was written by some one we know," she observed reflectively. "When did you write to him last?" "When I was here yesterday, waiting for you to go to the matinée." "Do you expect to recognize this unknown paragon?" asked Mrs. Harbinger with an air perhaps a thought too dispassionate. A charming blush came over May's face, but she answered with perfect readiness:-- "He asked me to give him a sign." "What kind of a sign?" "He said he would wear any flower I named if I would--" "Would wear one, too, you minx! That's why you have a red carnation at your throat, is it? Oh, you ought to be shut up on bread and water for a month!" May showed signs of relapsing again into tears. "I declare, I think you are just as horrid as you can be," she protested. "I wish I hadn't told you a word. I'm sure there was no need that I should. I--" The lordly form of Graham the butler appeared at the drawing-room door. "Mrs. Croydon," he announced. II THE MADNESS OF A MAN While Mrs. Harbinger was receiving from May Calthorpe the disjointed confession of that young woman's rashness, her husband, Tom Harbinger, was having a rather confused interview with a client in his down-town office. The client was a middle-aged man, with bushy, sandy hair, and an expression of invincible simplicity not unmixed with obstinacy. Tom was evidently puzzled how to take his client or what to do with him. He had, as they talked, the air of being uncertain whether Mr. Barnstable was in earnest, and of not knowing how far to treat him seriously. "But why do you come to me?" he asked at length, looking at his client as one regards a prize rebus. "Of course 'Love in a Cloud,' like any other book, has a publisher. Why don't you go there to find out who wrote it?" The other shook his head wearily. He was a chunky man, seeming to be made largely of oleaginous material, and appearing to be always over-worn with the effort of doing anything with muscles and determination hopelessly flabby despite his continual persistence. "I've been to them," he returned; "but they won't tell." "Then why not let the matter pass? It seems to me--"