Into the unhappy havoc of the Stranger's face a rather sick but very determinate little smile shot suddenly. "Well, I certainly am rattled?" he acknowledged. His embarrassment was absolutely perfect. Not a whit too much, not a whit too little, at a moment when the slightest under-emphasis or over-emphasis of his awkwardness would have stamped him ineradicably as either boor--or bounder. More indeed by his chair's volition than by his own he seemed to jerk aside then and there from any further responsibility for the incident. Turbid as the storm at the window his eyes racked back to the eyes of his companions. "Surely," he besought us, "there must be some place--some hotel--somewhere in this town where I can crawl into for a day or two till I can yank myself together again? . . . Taking me in this way from the streets--or worse the way you-people have--" Along the stricken pallor of his forehead a glisten of sweat showed faintly. From my eyes to my Husband's eyes, and back to mine again he turned with a sharply impulsive gesture of appeal. "How do you-people know but what I _am_ a burglar?" he demanded. "Even so," I suggested blithely, "can't you see that we'd infinitely rather have you visiting here as our friend than boarding at the hotel as our foe!" The mirthless smile on the Stranger's face twitched ever so faintly at one corner. "You really believe then--" he quickened, "that there is 'honor among thieves'?" "All proverbs," intercepted my Husband a bit abruptly, "are best proved by their antithesis. We do at least know that there is at times--a considerable streak of dishonor among saints!" "Eh?--What's that--I didn't quite catch it," beamed the Bridegroom. But my Husband's entire attention seemed focused rather suddenly on the Stranger. "So you'd much better stay right on here where you are!" he adjured him with some accent of authority. "Where all explanations are already given and taken! . . . Ourselves quite opportunely short one guest and long one guest-room, and--No! I won't listen for a moment to its being called an 'imposition'!" protested my Husband. "Not for a moment! Only, of course, I must admit," he confided genially, above the flare of a fresh cigarette, "that it would be a slight convenience to know your name." "My name?" flushed the Stranger. "Why, of course! It's Allan John." "You mean 'John Allan'," corrected the May Girl very softly. "No," insisted the Stranger. "It's Allan John." Quite logically he began to rummage through his pockets for the proof. "It's written on my bill-folder," he frowned. "It's in my check-book. . . . It's written on no-end of envelopes." With his face the color of half-dead sedge grass he sank back suddenly into his chair and turned his empty hands limply outward as though his wrist-bones had been wrung. "Gone!" he gasped. "Stripped!--Everything!"