Again I yielded, for I was coming to have more and more faith in
the old Kennedy I had seen made over into a first-class
detective, and together we started for the Greenes', Craig
carrying something in one of those long black handbags which
physicians use.

Fletcher met us on the driveway. He seemed to be very much
affected, for his face was drawn, and he shifted from one
position to another nervously, from which we inferred that Miss
Bond was feeling worse. It was late afternoon, almost verging on
twilight, as he led us through the reception-hall and thence onto
a long porch overlooking the bay and redolent with honeysuckle.

Miss Bond was half reclining in a wicker chair us we entered. She
started to rise to greet us, but Fletcher gently restrained her,
saying, as he introduced us, that he guessed the doctors would
pardon any informality from an invalid.

Fletcher was a pretty fine fellow, and I had come to like him;
but I soon found myself wondering what he had ever done to
deserve winning such a girl as Helen Bond. She was what I should
describe as the ideal type of "new" woman,--tall and athletic,
yet without any affectation of mannishness. The very first
thought that struck me was the incongruousness of a girl of her
type suffering from an attack of "nerves," and I felt sure it
must be as Craig had said, that she was concealing a secret that
was having a terrible effect on her. A casual glance might not
have betrayed the true state of her feelings, for her dark hair
and large brown eyes and the tan of many suns on her face and
arms betokened anything but the neurasthenic. One felt