longer. Downstairs someone was dolefully playing a flute, most horrible of all tortures to tightened nerves. While her lodgers were at church the tireless Mrs. Schiller was doing a little housecleaning: he could hear the monotonous rasp of a carpet-sweeper passing back and forth in an adjoining room. He creaked irritably downstairs, and heard the usual splashing behind the bathroom door. In the frame of the hall mirror he saw a pencilled note: Will Mrs. Smith please call Tarkington 1565, it said. Unreasonably annoyed, he tore a piece of paper out of his notebook and wrote on it Will Mrs. Smith please call Bath 4200. Mounting to the second floor he tapped on the bathroom door. "Don't come in!" cried an agitated female voice. He thrust the memorandum under the door, and left the house.
Walking the windy paths of Prospect Park he condemned himself to relentless self-scrutiny. "I've damned myself forever with her," he groaned, "unless I can prove something." The vision of Titania's face silhouetted against the shelves of books came maddeningly to his mind. "I was going to have such a good time, and you've spoilt it all!" With what angry conviction she had said: "I never saw a man like you before—and I've seen a good many!"
Even in his disturbance of soul the familiar
