"Good-bye," she said.

"Good-bye?" I took her hand perplexed. "Why do you say that? Surely we're to meet again soon."

"Why should we?" she asked.

That hurt me. I dropped her hand. "Ah, yes, why should we?" I repeated coldly.

"No reason at all. Good-bye and good luck!" And Mary Will was gone.

As I sat now on my battered bags, leaning against a very damp pole in the middle of a very damp fog, it occurred to me that I had been wrong in permitting myself that moment of annoyance. I should have taken, instead, a firm uncompromising attitude. Too late now, however. She had gone from me, into the mystery of the fog. I would never see her again.

A tall slender figure loaded with baggage came and stood on the curb not two feet from where I waited. The light that struggled down from a lamp overhead revealed in blurred but unmistakable outline the flat expressionless face of Hung Chin-chung, old Henry Drew's faithful body servant. I turned, for the master could not be far behind, and sure enough the fog disgorged the dapper figure of the little millionaire. He ran smack into me.

"Why, it's young Winthrop," he cried, peering into my face. "Hello, son-I was looking for you. We've had some pretty harsh words-but there's no real reason why we shouldn't part as friends. Now, is there?"

His tone was wistful, but it made no appeal to me. No real reason? The presumptuous rascal! However, I was in no mood to quarrel.

"I'm waiting for a taxi," I said inanely,

"A taxi? You'll never get one in this fog." I suppose it was the truth. "Let us give you a lift to your hotel, my boy. We'll be delighted."

I was naturally averse to accepting favors of this man, but at that instant his wife and Mary Will emerged into our little circle of light, and I smiled at the idea of riding uptown with Mary Will, who had just dismissed me for all time. A big limousine with a light burning faintly inside slipped up to the curb, and Hung was helping the women to enter.

"Come on, my boy," pleaded old Drew.

"All right," I answered rather ungraciously, and jumped in.

Drew followed, Hung piled my bags somewhere in back, and we crept off into the fog.

"Taking Mr. Winthrop to his hotel," explained Drew.

"How nice," his wife said in her cold hard voice. I looked toward Mary Will. She seemed unaware of my presence.

Like a living thing, the car felt its way cautiously through the mist. About us sounded a constant symphony of automobile horns, truckmen's repartee, the clank of hoofs, the rattle of wheels. From where I sat I could see the clear-cut beautiful silhouette of Carlotta Drew's face, shrouded in fog, against the window. I wondered what she was thinking-this woman whose exploits had furnished the gossips of the China coast with a serial story running through many mad years. Of her first husband, perhaps; that gallant army man whose heart she had soon broken as she leapt to the arms of another. They had come and gone, the men, until, her beauty fading, she had accepted the offer of old Drew's millions, though she hated him in her heart. What a fool the old man had been! On our trip across the gossips had played once more with her rather frail reputation, linking her name with that of the ship's doctor, handsome hero of many a fleeting romance.

"Home again," chuckled old Drew. An unaccustomed gaiety seemed to have taken hold of him. "I tell you, it's good.