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saying. "Do you remember that?"
     
    "Yes " said Mathilda. "Yes, of course I did. Not this room."
     
    "You were in Seven-o-five," he stated. The number seemed right to her. She could not have recollected it, but she recognized it. "You had some supper sent up," he went on. She nodded. "But a little later, about nine o'clock, you went down to the lobby."
     
    "No " said Mathilda bluntly. Not at all. It was not so. She had crawled into bed to read. She hadn't been able to read or sleep either. She remembered getting up to look for aspirin, waiting for drowsiness that would not come, the desperate tricks she had tried to play on her own mind, the getting up at last to sit by the window holding her head.
     
    "So that's where it begins," the man was saying.
     
    "Where what begins?"
     
    "Your forgetting."
     
    "But I— What is it you say I've forgotten?"
     
    "You came downstairs about nine o'clock," he told her, "that Sunday evening. You were pretty distressed; you were feeling pretty sick about Oliver."
     
    A thrill of dismay and excitement went through Mathilda. How did he know that?
     
    "So you were restless and you came down to get something to read. It was a kind of excuse to get away from your room. You hated to go back. You drifted across the lobby toward the grillroom. That's when I saw you."
     
    Mathilda said, "You couldn't have seen me. I didn't leave my room that Sunday night."
     
    "Please," he begged. He closed his eyes. "You made me think of flying," he said in quite a different voice. "You made me think of the sky or a bird. You're like a Winged Victory in modern dress, but with better ankles. You've got such a tearing beauty, Tyl—you're windblown. It's in your bones, your long, lovely legs, the way you walk, your face, your nose. The molding of the upper part of your cheek, around the outside of your eye. I've dreamed about it. And how that dear old soul, your Luther Grandison, can be so blind as to call you his ugly duckling and never see the swan! Why, Tyl, don't you know you make Althea look like a lump of paste?"
     
    Mathilda heard what he said; she heard the words. But her mind went spinning off into confusion. How could he say such things? How could such things be said at all? She tightened her fingers around her purse. She felt a little dizzy. She was used to people
    saying kind words about her looks. It was because she was so rich. She told herself that this, too, must be deliberate flattery, because she was so rich.
     
    He opened his eyes, he smiled. His voice sank back as if it had begun to tire. "Maybe I'd better make it plain right away. I fell in love with you, Mathilda, but you didn't fall in love with me. I knew that. I still know it. If you only had, maybe you wouldn't have for-
    gotten."
     
    Mathilda took hold of herself. She dismissed the thought that someone must have gone mad. It wasn't helpful. She must think better than that. "Why are you trying to make me believe something I know is not so?" she asked quietly. "I do know, because I remember every minute of that time. There is nothing I've forgotten. I haven't been hurt or sick. I know exactly what happened to me in this hotel while I was here, and everything that has happened since. There is no gap." She straightened her shoulders. "I thought at first you might be honestly mistaken. You'd somehow or other got me mixed up with some other girl. But now I see you aren't mistaken, Mr. Howard. You're just lying. I'd like to know why."
     
    He shut his eyes to hide a brief gleam that baffled her. He groaned. He took his hands out of his pockets and held his head for a moment. Then his hands fell, relaxed and open, and he said, "My poor Tyl. Don't—don't be upset."
     
    But Mathilda was thinking hard. "What about Grandy?" she cried. "Grandy knows you! Does Grandy think—"
     
    "Yes," he said. "I've been—well, I've been staying there."
     
    Mathilda got up. She was furious. "So that's why, is it? You've wormed your way into Grandy's