"'Where's my key?' he demanded, angrily, 'my boarding-house key? I want to get in before breakfast-time.'
"'Up in my studio,' I answered, fully as tartly. 'Go up there and trade keys; and don't bring any more of your friends around to me.'
"I went to a restaurant, spent my twenty-five cents for breakfast, and then climbed to the studio. The door was unlocked, but the bird had flown.
"I spent a miserable day, doing no work at all, but worrying greatly over the fate of Mrs. Milner.
"But, at nightfall, having replenished my pockets from the bank, as I was about to leave the building, to take the train for home, I met her, bag and baggage in a cab at the door.
"Did you ever get a thorough scolding from an angry woman, or, as in this case, from a good-natured woman pretending to be angry? But, alas! I did not know that she was pretending, and I suffered horribly—on the ride to the station and on the train. I was an unfaithful, treacherous scoundrel, leaving a trusting and loving wife alone for a whole week, and giving the use of 'my office'—in which there was a couch and an ice-box and a gas-stove and a bath-tub and a clothes-closet (for hiding purposes)—to a shameless person with a black-and-blue eye, who had stared at her most insolently when she had come to the door.
"'I mean to tell your wife,' Mrs. Milner said, before we had reached the Grand Central Station; and she repeated the threat a dozen times, before we arrived at my house. Then, on the walk home, I, who had maintained a moody silence all the way, plucked up heart, in the effort to compose myself for the meeting with my wife, and asked her how she had managed herself.
"'I,' she answered, with feminine scorn, 'I was turned away from three hotels, before I finally understood your generous metropolitan hotel rules, which doom traveling women to the police-stations for lodging. I should have walked the streets, if I had not met a friend who generously took me home with her.'
"'I hope you slept well,' I ventured, miserably.
"'I did not! Her apartments were 'way up at the top of a big, high building; and, just as I got to sleep, there was a frightful banging at the door, and a man—a drunken man, evidently—shouted to be let in. "Tom," he howled, "Tom, get up! Let me in! I want to see you; it's important. Let me in!" Now, of course, there was no "Tom" there, so I just lay quiet, frightened to death, however; and, at last, the drunken brute went away. But I did not sleep a wink, thanks to you and your indifference toward my safety, and your devotion to creatures who get black eyes. Oh, I'll tell your wife! I'll let her know!'