"Much she cares about my safety!" he muttered under his breath. Anne heard with an unacknowledged but irritating pang. So there was a wife, after all, in spite of his almost adolescent appearance! "Shall I send your wife a telegram?" she inquired in a matter-of-fact tone. "My wife!" he stared at her in surprise. "My mother, you mean!" Relief welled up in Anne's heart, but she chose to ignore its humiliating presence. "Your mother, then?" she pursued evenly. "Yes I suppose we had better," he acknowledged grudgingly. "But she is absolutely not to know where I am, or to try to communicate with me until I myself make the first move. That is to be understood." "Very well," said Anne with composure. "I'm sure we can manage that. It might be a good idea to write a letter and have my chauffeur take it down to New York and mail it from there? Or perhaps it would be even better if he took it to your house and left it there. Then there would be no postmark." "You're wonderful," he cried enthusiastically. "I never would have thought of that!" She met his look of admiration demurely. "Oh no, it is really a very simple idea. I'll go and get some notepaper and you had better write it yourself, so that your mother can be sure that the letter is absolutely genuine." Acting as curb to his impetuosity and anger, she helped him to concoct one of the strangest letters that a mother ever received. Such a glacial letter, in spite of her own compassionate tempering, that at the end Anne was loath to send it at all. "It will break her heart," she said sorrowfully. But he laughed at her with bitter emphasis. "Heart? She doesn't possess one! All she cares about is what she can get out of me, not only in money, but in vicarious fame, as the fond mother of a musical prodigy!" Shocked and pitiful, Anne regarded him. His flushed cheeks and gleaming eyes warned of the ever-present danger of recurring fever. She spoke kindly as if to a sick child. "I'm sure you're exciting yourself unnecessarily. This will never do. You're not at all well, and things appear exaggeratedly awful. I'm sure your mother loves you, how could she help it?"