stretched along her knees in an attitude of rigid tension.

"But if you knew all this," she began at length, hardly able to force her voice above a whisper, "how is it that when I wrote you at the time of my husband's disappearance you said you did n't understand his letter?"

Parvis received this without perceptible discomfiture. "Why, I did n't understand it strictly speaking. And it was n't the time to talk about it, if I had. The Elwell business was settled when the suit was withdrawn. Nothing I could have told you would have helped you to find your husband.”

Mary continued to scrutinize to scrutinize him. "Then why are you telling me now?"

Still Parvis did not hesitate. "Well, to begin with, I supposed you knew more than you appear to-I mean about the circumstances of Elwell's death. And then people are talking of it now; the whole matter 's been raked up again. And I thought, if you did n't know, you ought to."

She remained silent, and he continued: "You see, it's only come out lately what a bad state Elwell's affairs were in. His wife's a proud woman, and she fought on/ as long as she could, going out to work, and taking sewing at home, when she got too sick-something with the heart, I believe. But she had his bedridden mother to look after, and the children, and she broke down under it, and finally had to ask for help. That attracted attention to the case, and the papers took it up, and a subscription was started. Everybody out there liked Bob Elwell, and most of the prominent names in the place are down on the list, and people began to wonder why-"

Parvis broke off to fumble in an inner pocket. "Here," he continued, "here 's an account of the whole thing from the 'Sentinel' a little sensational, of course. But I guess you'd better look it over."

He held out a newspaper to Mary, who unfolded it slowly, remembering, as she did so, the evening when, in that same room, the perusal of a clipping from the "Sentinel" had first shaken the depths of her security.

As she opened the paper, her eyes, shrinking from the glaring head-lines, "Widow of Boyne's Victim Forced to Appeal for Aid," ran down the column of

text to two portraits inserted in it. The first was her husband's, taken from a photograph made the year they had come to England. It was the picture of him that she liked best, the one that stood on the writing-table up-stairs in her bedroom. As the eyes in the photograph met hers, she felt it would be impossible to read what was said of him, and closed her lids. with the sharpness of the pain.

"I thought if you felt disposed to put your name down-" she heard Parvis continue.

She opened her eyes with an effort, and they fell on the other portrait. It was that of a youngish man, slightly built, in rough clothes, with features somewhat blurred by the shadow of a projecting hat-brim. Where had she seen that outline before? She stared at it confusedly, her heart hammering in her throat and ears. Then she gave a cry.

"This is the man-the man who came for my husband!"

She heard Parvis start to his feet, and was dimly aware that she had slipped backward into the corner of the sofa, and that he was bending above her in alarm. With an intense effort she straightened herself, and reached out for the paper, which she had dropped.

"It's the man! I should know him anywhere!" she cried in a voice that sounded in her own ears like a scream.

Parvis's voice seemed to come to her from far off, down endless, fog-muffled windings.

"Mrs. Boyne, you 're not very well. Shall I call somebody? Shall I get a glass of water?"

"No, no, no!" She threw herself toward him, her hand frantically clenching the newspaper. "I tell you, it's the man! I know him! He spoke to me in the garden!"

Parvis took the journal from her, directing his glasses to the portrait. "It can't be, Mrs. Boyne. It's Robert Elwell."

"Robert Elwell?" Her white stare seemed to travel into space. "Then it was Robert Elwell who came for him."

"Came for Boyne? The day he went away?" Parvis's voice dropped as hers rose. He bent over, laying a fraternal hand on her, as if to coax her gently back into her seat. "Why, Elwell was dead! Don't you remember?"

Mary sat with her eyes fixed on the picture, unconscious of what he was saying. 'Don't you remember Boyne's unfinished letter to me-t -the one you found on his desk that day? It was written just after he 'd heard of Elwell's death." She noticed an odd shake in Parvis's unemotional voice. "Surely you remember that!" he urged her.

Yes, she remembered: that was the profoundest horror of it. Elwell had died the day before her husband's disappearance; and this was Elwell's portrait; and it was the portrait of the man who had spoken to her in the garden. She lifted her head and looked slowly about the library. The library could have borne witness that it was also the portrait of the man who had come in that day to call Boyne from his unfinished letter. Through the misty surgings of her brain she heard the faint boom of half-forgotten wordswords spoken by Alida Stair on the lawn at Pangbourne before Boyne and his wife had ever seen the house at Lyng, or had imagined that they might one day live there.

"This was the man who spoke to me," she repeated.

She looked again at Parvis. He was trying to conceal his disturbance under what he imagined to be an expression of indulgent commiseration; but the edges of his lips were blue. "He thinks me mad; but I'm not mad," she reflected; and suddenly there flashed upon her a way of justifying her strange affirmation.

She sat quiet, controlling the quiver of her lips, and waiting till she could trust her voice to keep its habitual level; then she said, looking straight at Parvis: "Will you answer me one question, please? When was it that Robert Elwell tried to kill himself?"

"When-when?" Parvis stammered. "Yes; the date. Please try to remembcr."

She saw that he was growing still more afraid of her. "I have a reason," she insisted gently.

"Yes, yes. Only I can't remember. About two months before, I should say." "I want the date," she repeated.

Parvis picked up the newspaper. "We might see here," he said, still humoring her. He ran his eyes down the page. "Here it is. Last October-the-"

LXXIX-42

She caught the words from him. "The 20th, was n't it?" With a sharp look at her, he verified. "Yes, the 20th. Then you did know?"

"I know now." Her white stare continued to travel past him. "Sunday, the 20th-that was the day he came first." Parvis's voice was almost inaudible. "Came here first?"

"Yes."

"You saw him twice, then?"

"Yes, twice." with dilated eyes. 20th of October. because it was the

She breathed it at him "He came first on the I remember the date day we went up Mel

don Steep for the first time." She felt a faint gasp of inward laughter at the thought that but for that she might have forgotten.

Parvis continued to scrutinize her, as if trying to intercept her gaze.

"We saw him from the roof," she went on. "He came down the lime-avenue toward the house. He was dressed just as he is in that picture. My husband saw him first. He was frightened, and ran down ahead of me; but there was no one there. He had vanished."

"Elwell had vanished?" Parvis faltered. "Yes." Their two whispers seemed to grope for each other. "I could n't think what had happened. I see now. He

tried to come then; but he was n't dead enough he could n't reach us. He had to wait for two months; and then he came back again-and Ned went with him."

She nodded at Parvis with the look of triumph of a child who has successfully worked out a difficult puzzle. But suddenly she lifted her hands with a desperate. gesture, pressing them to her bursting temples.

"Oh, my God! I sent him to NedI told him where to go! I sent him to this room!" she screamed out.

She felt the walls of the room rush toward her, like inward falling ruins; and she heard Parvis, a long way off, as if through the ruins, crying to her, and struggling to get at her. But she was numb to his touch, she did not know what he was saying. Through the tumult she heard but one clear note, the voice of Alida Stair, speaking on the lawn at Pangbourne.

"You won't know till afterward," it said. "You won't know till long, long afterward."

NOT

long ago, an Oriental, domesticated in America, but plainly retaining the imagination of his kind and clime, lectured about rugs before a women's club in an inland city. At the end of his discourse he asked the members to question him on any phase of the subject that was not wholly clear to them.

One woman, prompt to seize the opportunity, said:

"I should like to know more about these wonderful dyes. Why cannot our dyers make colors like those of the East?"

"Dyes, Madam?" returned Ben Ali, solemnly. "No, it is all due to the wool. That is what makes

fable, the spirit, and in generous measure the letter, too, of the Arabian Nights-these and the rug have gone hand in hand in the United States for many years.

the difference. Western dyers can never hope to obtain these colors, for you have no sheep like the sheep in my country. Here they are all white, or brown, or black; but the sheep in my land have many hues-blue, green, red, soft, natural colors, so that in many cases it is necessary only to wash, card, and spin the wool to fit it for weaving. When your workmen want such colors, they must dye for them, and the result of course is harsh and displeasing."

In this truthful relation may be read the one large, regrettable fault of the Oriental rug industry in America. The carpetings of the East seem to have brought an atmosphere with them, when they began to journey to these shores. Glamour,

Every third rug that is sold is the "royal" or "imperial" This or That; Hafiz, Sadi, and Firdusi, the singers of old Iran, are quoted to cozen attention away from the price-tag, if, indeed, there be a price-tag. The adoring and once adored bulbul has become as common to

our understanding as the English sparrow, and all but as great a nuisance. And even now purchasers have not learned to discern the shifting, uncertain boundary between fancy and mendacity,

Where romance endeth and the lie begins.

Every Persian kali, with the luster of a few years upon it, becomes the stolen throne-covering of almost any monarch from Sennacherib down to little Ahmed Shah. After some of the tales told him, the new owner can never be perfectly sure that his dining-room rug will not prove to be the magical carpet of Araby, or that at any meal-time, through accidental utterance of the requisite cabalistic syllables, he and his entire family may not all be whisked away instanter to Bagdad, Ecbatana, or Babylon. Jinns are kept in stock in many rug shops, like blue or green trading-stamps, and one trading-stamps, and one or more given away with each and every fabric.