I rose.

"Good night," I said, curtly. "I'm going to bed."

"That's right, Hosy. You ought to go. You'll be sick again if you sit up any longer. Good night, dearie."

"And you?" I asked. "What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to set up a spell longer. I want to think."

"I don't. I wish I might never think again. Or dream, either. I am awake at last. God knows I wish I wasn't!"

She moved toward me. There was the same odd expression on her face and a queer, excited look in her eyes.

"Perhaps you aren't really awake, Hosy," she said, gently. "Perhaps this is the final dream and when you do wake you'll find--"

"Oh, bosh!" I interrupted. "Don't tell me you have another presentiment.

If you have keep it to yourself. Good night."

I was weak from my recent illness and I had been under a great nervous strain all that evening. These are my only excuses and they are poor ones. I spoke and acted abominably and I was sorry for it afterward. I have told Hephzy so a good many times since, but I think she understood without my telling her.

"Well," she said, quietly, "dreams are somethin', after all. It's somethin' to have had dreams. I sha'n't forget mine. Good night, Hosy."

The next morning after breakfast she announced that she had an errand or two to do. She would run out and do them, she said, but she would be gone only a little while. She was gone nearly two hours during which I paced the floor or sat by the window looking out. The crowded boulevard was below me, but I did not see it. All I saw was a future as desolate and blank as the Bayport flats at low tide, and I, a quahaug on those flats, doomed to live, or exist, forever and ever and ever, with nothing to live for.

Hephzy, when she did return to the hotel, was surprisingly chatty and good-humored. She talked, talked, talked all the time, about nothing in particular, laughed a good deal, and flew about, packing our belongings and humming to herself. She acted more like the Hephzy of old than she had for weeks. There was an air of suppressed excitement about her which I could not understand. I attributed it to the fact of our leaving for America in the near future and her good humor irritated me. My spirits were lower than ever.

"You seem to be remarkably happy," I observed, fretfully.

"What makes you think so, Hosy? Because I was singin'? Father used to say my singin' was the most doleful noise he ever heard, except a fog-horn on a lee shore. I'm glad if you think it's a proof of happiness: I'm much obliged for the compliment."

"Well, you are happy, or you are trying to appear so. If you are pretending for my benefit, don't. I'M not happy."

"I know, Hosy; I know. Well, perhaps you--"

She didn't finish the sentence.

"Perhaps what?"

"Oh, nothin', nothin'. How many shirts did you bring with you? is this all?"

She sang no more, probably because she saw that the "fog-horn" annoyed me, but her manner was just as strange and her nervous energy as pronounced. I began to doubt if my surmise, that her excitement and exaltation were due to the anticipation of an early return to Bayport, was a correct one. I began to thing there must be some other course and to speculate concerning it. And I, too, grew a bit excited.

"Hephzy," I said, suddenly, "where did you go when you went out this morning? What sort of 'errands' were those of yours?"

She was folding my ties, her back toward me, and she answered without turning.

"Oh, I had some odds and ends of things to do," she said. "This plaid necktie of yours is gettin' pretty shabby, Hosy. I guess you can't wear it again. There! I mustn't stop to talk. I've got my own things to pack."

She hurried to her own room and I asked no more questions just then.

But I was more suspicious than ever. I remembered a question of hers the previous evening and I believed.... But, if she had gone to the Continental and seen Herbert Bayliss, what could he have told her to make her happy?

We took the train for Calais and crossed the Channel to Dover. This time the eccentric strip of water was as calm as a pond at sunset. No jumpy, white-capped billows, no flying spray, no seasick passengers. Tarpaulins were a drag on the market.

"I wouldn't believe," declared Hephzy, "that this lookin'-glass was the same as that churned-up tub of suds we slopped through before. It doesn't trickle down one's neck now, does it, Hosy. A 'nahsty' cross-in'

comin' and a smooth one comin' back. I wonder if that's a sign."

"Oh, don't talk about signs, Hephzy," I pleaded, wearily. "You'll begin to dream again, I suppose, pretty soon."

"No, I won't. I think you and I have stopped dreamin', Hosy. Maybe we're just wakin' up, same as I told you."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Mean? Oh, I guess I didn't mean anything. Good-by, old France! You're a lovely country and a lively one, but I sha'n't cry at sayin' good-by to you this time. And there's England dead ahead. Won't it seem good to be where they talk instead of jabber! I sha'n't have to navigate by the 'one-two-three' chart over there."

Dover, a flying trip through the customs, the train again, an English dinner in an English restaurant car--not a "wagon bed," as Hephzy said, exultantly--and then London.

We took a cab to the hotel, not Bancroft's this time, but a modern downtown hostelry where there were at least as many Americans as English. In our rooms I would have cross-questioned Hephzy, but she would not be questioned, declaring that she was tired and sleepy. I was tired, also, but not sleepy. I was almost as excited as she seemed to be by this time. I was sure she had learned something that morning in Paris, something which pleased her greatly. What that something might be I could not imagine; but I believed she had learned it from Herbert Bayliss.

And the next morning, after breakfast, she announced that she had arranged for a cab and we must start for the station at once. I said nothing then, but when the cab pulled up before a railway station, a station which was not our accustomed one but another, I said a great deal.

"What in the world, Hephzy!" I exclaimed. "We can't go to Mayberry from here."

"Hush, hush, Hosy. Wait a minute--wait till I've paid the driver. Yes, I'm doin' it myself. I'm skipper on this cruise. You're an invalid, didn't you know it. Invalids have to obey orders."

The cabman paid, she took my arm and led me into the station.

"And now, Hosy," she said, "let me tell you. We aren't goin' to Mayberry--not yet. We're going to Leatherhead."

"To Leatherhead!" I repeated. "To Leatherhead! To--her? We certainly will do no such thing."

"Yes, we will, Hosy," quietly. "I haven't said anything about it before, but I've made up my mind. It's our duty to see her just once more, once more before--before we say good-by for good. It's our duty."

"Duty! Our duty is to let her alone, to leave her in peace, as she asked us."

"How do you know she is in peace? Suppose she isn't. Suppose she's miserable and unhappy. Isn't it our duty to find out? I think it is?"

I looked her full in the face. "Hephzy," I said, sharply, "you know something about her, something that I don't know. What is it?"

"I don't know as I know anything, Hosy. I can't say that I do. But--"

"You saw Herbert Bayliss yesterday. That was the 'errand' you went upon yesterday morning in Paris. Wasn't it?"

She was very much taken aback. She has told me since that she had no idea I suspected the truth.

"Wasn't it?" I repeated.

"Why--why, yes, it was, Hosy. I did go to see him, there at his hotel.

When you told me how he acted and what he said to you I thought 'twas awfully funny, and the more I thought it over the funnier it seemed. So I made up my mind to see him and talk with him myself. And I did."