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 I couldn't help thinking of you. And I was scared stiff."

"Why?"

Mamie crossed the room and began to touch herself up with yellow powder, reminding Grover of the days when children used to hold buttercups under each other's noses and chins to see if they liked butter. "You don't understand Oscar as I do," she said. "How could you! He feels more deeply than ordinary men. I couldn't think of you being felled by a hunk of marble and not warn you, could I!"

He had only one aim now, and that was to get to a telephone where he could talk in private. He picked up his hat and stick.

As he was leaving he had for Mamie, in the midst of his own bleak preoccupations, a final volt of compassion.

"Don't be too cast down," he admonished, and added in a tone which was not quite as ironical as it sounded, "You have your art, you know."

Mamie gave him an ineffable look, and from the landing he heard her playing the accompaniment to her favorite aria: Dis-mois que je suis belle—

Apparently it hadn't occurred to Mamie that if he were not responsible for Olga's absence, he might be experiencing emotions which if they were not so tempestuous as those of the bereaved lover might be at the least wildly disquieting.

He found a telephone booth and searched the Bottin