out of nights, because it had never been installed; no brass-bound
hall-boy lounged in desuetude upon the stoop and took too intimate
and personal an interest in the tenants' correspondence. The
inhabitants, in brief, were free to come and go according to the
dictates of their consciences, unsupervised by neighborly women-folk,
unhindered by a parasitic corps of menials not in their personal
employ.

Wherefore was Maitland astonished, and the more so because of the
season. At any other season of the year he would readily have
accounted for the phenomenon that now fell under his observation,
on the hypothesis that the woman was somebody's sister or cousin
or aunt. But at present that explanation was untenable; Maitland
happened to know that not one of the other men was in New York,
barring himself; and his own presence there was a thing entirely
unforeseen.

Still incredulous, he mentally conned the list: Barnes, who
occupied the first flat, was traveling on the Continent; Conkling,
of the third, had left a fortnight since to join a yachting party
on the Mediterranean; Bannister and Wilkes, of the fourth and
fifth floors, respectively, were in Newport and Buenos Aires.

"Odd!" concluded Maitland.

So it was. She had just closed the door, one thought; and now
stood poised as if in momentary indecision on the low stoop,
glancing toward Fifth Avenue the while she fumbled with a
refractory button at the wrist of a long white kid glove. Blurred
though it was by the darkling twilight and a thin veil, her face