“I don’t know. Perhaps only a little while.” “I guess you can stay here a while,” he said. “You spoke of your wife?” she suggested. “She’s visiting my daughter, over in Augusta,” Jeff explained. “Won’t be back for a week anyways. I reckon it’d be easier for you if she was here; but you’re welcome anyways.” She looked down helplessly at the gown she wore. “It was a mad thing to do,” she whispered, half to herself. Jeff guessed what she was thinking. “I reckon you could wear some of my wife’s things,” he suggested. “Have you room for me?” There were two bedrooms on the ground floor of the farmhouse; but he thought she would prefer a measure of isolation. “I can make the bed in the room upstairs,” he replied. “Won’t your neighbors be surprised that I am here?” Jeff considered that for a long time in silence, till she began to be afraid the obstacle was insuperable. Then his eyes lighted with recollection, and he said slowly, “My brother moved to California and married there, and his girl has been talking about coming to see us. We can let on you’re her.” She cried with sudden friendly warmth in her tones, “You’re ever so kind to me. I appreciate it. Your taking me in so unquestioningly.” “That’s all right,” he told her. “I’m going to take you at your word,” she exclaimed. “I’m going to stay.” III Jeff Ranney was a man habituated to routine; he fell naturally into a regular way of doing even irregular things. The next morning his life was on the surface as it had always been. He rose to his chores, returned to his breakfast, went into the woodlot and set about the task he had postponed the day before. The woman cooked breakfast and did the work about the kitchen that his wife might have done. It would have been easy for any outsider to accept as fact her pretended status as Jeff’s niece from California. But Jeff was not deceived by the apparent normality of this new existence. The man was immensely curious about her, absorbed in the mystery which she personified. His thoughts all that day were full of conjectures, full of hypotheses, formed and as quickly thrown away. One guess he clung to as probable fact. It seemed to him certain she had come ashore from that yacht which he had seen lying in East Harbor the night before; had come ashore as one who flees. But to the questions who she might be and why she had fled, he found a thousand answers and accepted none of them. The question of her identity was solved that night, for on the first page of his Boston paper a headline caught his eye. It read thus: MILLIONAIRE VILES’ WIFE IS A SUICIDE His eyes moved down the closely printed column, intent on each word. Save for journalistic padding the first paragraph told the story: