"Confound it sir, I'm not deaf. I'll pass over the next half hour, except to say that they billed and cooed without cessation. I give you my word, that closet was like an ice-chest. I demmed near froze to death. At last they went away. Bellows came back with my trousers and shoes. After he'd gone, I stole out and got into 'em. There's a lot more I could tell, but--what's the use? I want to get out of here. Just to think that I came up here in all this storm to ask that creature to be my wife! 'Gad, I wouldn't ask her now if she was the last woman on earth. Open the door for me, Bellows! I'm going next door to the Lackaday, for the night, Bosworth. Call up by 'phone in the morning to see if I have pneumonia." He stormed into the hall without saying good night to Miss Downing. They heard him swear roundly as Bellows opened the door to the vestibule. Then there was a slam of the outer door. Together the young man and woman walked to the front window, and, side by side, they saw him fight his way down the steps and across the thirty feet of snowbank that lay between the house and the street entrance to the hotel bar. Mr. Van Pycke did not know, until he saw it in the papers next day, that there had been a wedding. It may be well to add in this connection that it was a long time before New York heard the last of that wedding and its amazing guests by proxy. "Good night," said Miss Downing, as they turned away from the window. "Oh, please, not yet," he cried. "I am so tired," she pleaded. "The sleigh will be back in twenty or thirty minutes." "I'll stay ten minutes," she agreed. "Come and sit before the fire in the library. You may have a cigar or a cigaret--but nothing to drink." He started guiltily. At the end of ten minutes, despite the fact that he was very amusing, she rose from the deep, comfortable chair before the fender, and said good night once more. "I hear sleigh bells in front," she said. "When are you leaving?" he asked, looking into her eyes with all of the new interest that had come into his own. "To-morrow. I'm to have a year's vacation on full pay," she said quite clearly. His eyes flew very wide open. "Isn't it nice, Mr. Van Pycke?" She was gone. He stood perfectly still, listening to the rustle of her gown as she sped up the stairs beyond. Something like a soft laugh came back to him from the dome of the hall. His face was a study. "By thunder!" he murmured, prior to a long, intent contemplation of the blazing coals. At last, shrugging his shoulders in dire perplexity, he turned and slowly made his way to the front windows. The sleigh was not in sight. He glanced at his watch. Eleven-twenty. With sudden exasperation he jammed his hands into his pockets and said something softly. Kicking a chair to the window, he sat down and glared at the snow-covered glass. Outside, the wind shrieked louder than ever.