"Of course," Dr. Holt said, when it was plain that nothing more could be done, "you ought to have left her where she was."

"But we didn't know whether she was alive—" they excused themselves.

"Was there anything the matter with her?" the doctor said; she was beginning to think of the certificate she must make out. "Was she low-spirited?"

"She was dreadfully disappointed because she didn't get a letter she was expecting."

"Love-letter?"

"I don't know," Frederica said.

She and Howard had left the office, where the dead woman lay on the doctor's lounge, and were standing in the front hall, side by side, like two children who were being scolded. From above the hat-rack, a mounted stag's head watched them with faintly gleaming eyes. Dr. Holt, a woman with a strong, bad-tempered face, was plainly out of patience with them both.

"I've got to get the coroner," she said, frowning; "and it's nearly twelve o'clock." Then she asked a question that was like a little shock of electricity to the two who, in this last terrifying hour, had entirely forgotten themselves. "Did she have any love-affair?"

[Pg 216]

"Yes," Frederica said, in a low voice. ("He refused me.")

"Tell me, please," Dr. Holt persisted.

"She was—in love."

"I suppose she was all right? I mean, respectable?"

"Flora?" Fred said, with a recoil of anger, "of course she was respectable."

"That's what I thought. Man desert her? You spoke of a letter—perhaps she was hoping to hear from him?"

"No, he didn't exactly desert her. I mean, she thought somebody was in love with her, several times. But none of the men seemed—" Frederica's hands clutched together—"to want her. So she was unhappy."

"Oh," said the doctor. "Yes. I understand. Quite frequent in women of her age. She would have been all right if she hadn't been—respectable; or even if she'd got religion, good and hard. Religion," said Dr. Holt, writing rapidly in a memorandum-book, "is a safety-valve for the unmarried woman in the forties, whose work doesn't interest her."

"Flora was as good as anybody could be!" Fred said, hotly.

"Oh, I didn't mean any reflection on her character," said the doctor, kindly, "I merely meant that any woman who hasn't either work, or religion, or marriage, generally gets out of kilter, mentally. Of course," she meditated, tapping her chin with her fountain-pen, "you two must go to the coroner's with me."

In the next hour and a half, of driving about to find the coroner, then the undertaker, then arranging what was[Pg 217] to be done with the body, the "two" had no time for the self-consciousness that the doctor's words had rekindled—except for just one moment: they had come back to Dr. Holt's house, and again were standing in the entry, below the deer's head. In the office, the coroner was questioning Dr. Holt. The office door was ajar.

"This man, Maitland; do you know anything about him? Is he all right? Of course, you never can tell—"

At that, they couldn't help looking at each other, with a flash of what might have been, under other conditions, amusement.

"Why, he's Howard Maitland!" they heard Dr. Holt say; "you know? The Maitland Iron Works!"

"Oh!" the coroner apologized, "I didn't get on to that! 'Course he's all right."

Then Dr. Holt: "It appears the poor woman tried to get married, but she couldn't find a husband. So she killed herself."

This time the two in the hall did not look at each other. Fred stared up at the stag's glistening eyes. Howard buckled and unbuckled his driving-gauntlets. For the rest of her life, Frederica never saw a mounted deer's head without a stab of remembrance.

It was nearly four o'clock in the morning when everything was attended to and Howard turned his car homeward. "Do sit in front with me, Fred," he said; "you can't sit back there in the tonneau."

"All right," she said, absently, and, getting in, pulled Zippy on to her lap. As she sat down, she suddenly realized that Howard's request implied that he felt an [Pg 218]embarrassment for her which she was not feeling for herself. She began to feel it soon enough! Embarrassment flowed in upon them both. Howard talked about Flora—then fell silent: ("She 'tried to get married'!") Then Fred talked about her—and fell silent. ("He needn't worry; I won't drown myself!")

The ride into town was forever! The bleary October dawn had whitened in the mist like a dead face, before they drew up at 15 Payton Street, and for the last ten miles they did not exchange a word. Fred was thinking, dazedly, of Flora; but every now and then would come the stab: "He refused me."

Howard was thinking only of Fred. "Stunning!" he was saying to himself. "She's not a girl! She's a man—no, I don't know any man who would have done what she did. I couldn't have, anyway. I take off my hat to courage like that!"

Not a girl? Fred, not a girl?...

When at last that dreadful night was over, and he had left the terrified Payton household, Frederica—the wonderful, the superwoman (superman, even, compared with Howard himself!), Frederica had, in a flash, been something less than superwoman; she had been pitifully, stupidly, incredibly feminine.

It was six o'clock in the morning when he closed Mrs. Payton's front door behind him and went out to get in his car—giving a shuddering glance at that pool of water on the floor of the tonneau. Just as he was throwing in his clutch he heard the door open again, and Fred called[Pg 219] to him. He went back, quickly; she was standing on the top step, haggard, ugly, dripping wet; a lock of hair had blown across her cheek, which was twitching painfully. She put out her hand to him, in a blind sort of gesture, but she did not look at him.

"I just wanted—to say," she said, and paused, for the jangle of the mules' bells and the clatter of a passing car drowned her voice;—"I wanted to—to say," she began again, with a gasp, "don't—" she stopped, with a sobbing laugh; "don't—tell Laura."

Don't tell!

Oh, she was a girl all right!—so Howard's thoughts ran as he drove home in the mist that had thickened into rain; Fred was a girl—a trembling, ignorant, frightened feminine creature! Suppose she did support a dead woman in her arms during that dreadful ride in the fog; suppose she did stand by, promptly obedient to the doctor's orders in that frantic time of endeavor in the office; suppose she had decided, quietly and wisely, exactly what was to be done, when it was plain that Flora's poor, melancholy little life had flown; suppose the coroner did say that he had never seen such nerve; suppose all those things—yet she had said those two pitiful words: "Don't tell." Yes, Fred Payton was a "girl"!

"You can talk all you want to about the 'new woman,'" Howard said, "I guess human nature doesn't change much...."

It changes so little, that at that revealing instant on the Paytons' front steps, with the light of the Egyptian[Pg 220] maid's globe streaming out into the rain, he had wanted to put his arms around Freddy and kiss her! Who knows but what, if there had not been all those weeks of rocking about on the mud flats, listening to the eternal dry rustle of the blowing palms, dredging for shells, and bothering about Jack McKnight, he might not, then and there, in spite of the wonderfulness of her, and because of the weakness of her, have fallen in love with old Freddy? As it was, when she said that piteous, feminine thing, the tears had stung in his eyes; he wrung her hand, stammering out: "Never! Why, I—you—" But the door closed in his face, and he went back to climb into his motor and go off to his own house.

That was at six o'clock; it was nine before Mr. and Mrs. Childs—summoned, to Billy-boy's great annoyance, while he was shaving—reached No. 15. They found Mrs. Holmes there ahead of them, and met Mr. Weston on the door-step.

In the parlor, watched by Andy Payton's sightless eyes, the court sat upon Freddy—for, of course, the whole distressing affair was her fault—she had dragged poor, crazy Flora out to that shocking camp! "I said last spring it was perfec' nonsense," Mr. Childs vociferated—"a girl, renting a bungalow! Why did you allow it, Ellen?"

"My dear William! I was perfectly helpless. Girls do anything nowadays. When I was a young lady—"

"My girl doesn't do 'anything,'" Laura's father said; "as for Freddy, the newspapers will ring with it! Pleasant for me. My niece, alone with that Maitland fellow! I've always distrusted him. Going off to dig shells—a[Pg 221] man with his income! That showed there's something queer about him. And Fred alone with him in that bungalow mixed up with a murder!"

Mrs. Holmes screamed.

"Well, suicide. Same thing. It will all come out," said Billy-boy, standing up with hi............