This wouldn't do either: he racked his brain for further employment, found excuses for other business letters, wrote them, then attacked a pile of social matters--notes and letters heretofore deliberately neglected to the ragged edge of decency. He replied to them all, and invariably in the negative. It gave him something to do to go out to the nearest lamp post and mail his letters. But when again he came back into his room the silence there left him hesitating on his threshold. But he went in and locked his door, and kept his back turned to the desk where pen and ink were tempting him as usual, and almost beyond endurance now. And at last he weakened, and wrote to her once more: * * * * * "MY DEAR MRS. LEEDS-- "I feel sure that your failure to answer my note of last week was unintentional. "Some day, when you have a moment, would you write me a line saying that you will be at home to me? "Very sincerely yours, "RICHARD STANLEY QUARREN." He took this note to the nearest District Messenger Office; then returned to his room. After an interminable time the messenger reported for the signature. Mrs. Leeds was not at home and he had left the note as directed. * * * * * The night was a white one. He did not feel very well when he sat scanning the morning paper over his coffee. Recently he had formed the custom of reading two columns only in the paper--Real Estate News and Society. In the latter column Strelsa usually figured. She figured as usual this morning; and he read the fulsome stuff attentively. Also there was a flourish concerning an annual event at the Santa Regina. And Quarren read this very carefully; and made up his mind as he finished the paragraph. The conclusion he came to over his coffee and newspaper materialised that afternoon at a Charity Bazaar, where, as he intended, he met Strelsa Leeds face to face. She said, coolly amiable: "Have you been away? One never sees you these days." "I have been nowhere," he said, pleasantly. She shook her pretty head in reproof: "Is it good policy for a young man to drop out of sight? Our world forgets over-night." He laughed: "Something similar has been intimated to me by others--but less gently. I'm afraid I've offended some people." "Oh, so you have already been disciplined?" "Verbally trounced, admonished, and still smarting under the displeasure of the powers that reign. They seem to resent my Sunday out--yet even their other domestics have that. And it's the first I've taken in three years. I think I'll have to give notice to my Missus." "The spectre of servitude still seems to obsess your humour," she observed indifferently. "I _am_ that spectre, Mrs. Leeds." "You certainly look pallid enough for any disembodied rôle. You have not been ill, by any chance?"--carelessly.