"There are certain things," wrote Mary, "which I can scarcely talk about on paper. At least, not as I should prefer talking about them. But these things must necessarily make a change in your life, and in mine. I don't want to seem harsh, Witter, but we can't go on as we have been doing. We'll both have to get used to the idea of trudging along in single harness. And I think you will understand why. I'm not exacting explanations, remember. I'm merely requesting an armistice. If you intend to let me, I still want to be your friend, and I trust no perceptible gulf will yarn [Transcriber's note: yawn?] between us, when we chance to dine at the same table or step through the same _cotillion_. But I must bow to those newer circumstances which seem to have confronted you even before they presented themselves to me. So when I say good-by, it is more to the Past, I think, than to You." That was the first night, I remember, when sleeping-powders proved of no earthly use to me. And this would not be an honest record of events if I neglected to state that the next day I shut myself up in my study and drank much more _Pommery-Greno_ than was good for me. I got drunk, in fact, blindly, stupidly, senselessly drunk. But it seemed to drape a veil between me and the past. It made a bonfire of my body to burn up the debris of my mind. And when poor old patient-eyed Benson mixed me a bromide and put me to bed I felt like a patient coming out of ether after a major operation. I was tired, and I wanted to lie there and rest for a long time. CHAPTER II THE OX-BLOOD VASE It was a week later, and well after two, in the dullest ebb of earth's deadest hour, when Benson lifted the portière and stepped into my room. I put down the book at which my brain had been scratching like a dog scratching at a closed door. It was a volume of Gautier's _nouvelles_. I had just reached that mildly assuaging point in _Une Nuit de Cléopâtre_ where the mysterious arrow, whistling through the palace window of a queen bored almost to extinction, buries itself quivering in the cedar wainscoting above her couch. But the incident, this time, seemed to have lost its appeal. The whole thing sounded very empty and old, very foolish and far-away. The thrill of drama, I cogitated, is apt to leak out of a situation when it comes to one over a circuit of two thousand moldering years. So I looked up at my servant a little listlessly and yet a little puzzled by what was plainly a studied calmness of appearance. "Benson, why aren't you in bed?" "If you will pardon me, sir," began the intruder, "I've a gentleman here." He was so extraordinarily cool about it that I rose like a fish at the flash of something unusual. "At this time of night?" I inquired. "Yes, sir." "But what _kind_ of gentleman, Benson?" Benson hesitated; it was the sort of hesitation that is able to translate silence into an apology. "I think, sir, it's a burglar."