"Still talking?" droned the menacing voice of Central.

"But it isn't fair," Hayden continued to protest to the Unknown. "You have me at a disadvantage, and I am going to drop all courtesy and any pretense of good manners. Now, are you ready? Yes? Well then, who are you and what do you want?"

"Who am I? Ah, senor, a waif of the wind, adrift on the night's Plutonian sh.o.r.e; but an hour or two ago, the gale caught me up in Spain and swept me over the seas. Regard me as a voice, merely a voice that would hold speech with so distinguished a naturalist."

"A naturalist!" exclaimed Hayden both disappointed and disconcerted. "You have mistaken your man. I can lay no claims to any scientific accomplishments or achievements."

"Oh, pardon!" There was an affected and exaggerated horror in her tones.

"I have made a mistake, oh, a great mistake. I had fancied that you were a collector of b.u.t.terflies."

Hayden nearly dropped the receiver. There was the smallest of pauses and then he spoke in his accustomed tone, a little cooler and more leisurely than usual, with some fleeting idea of caution.

"Ah, yes, yes, I am somewhat interested in that line. But the fact is known to few. Perhaps you will kindly tell me how you learned of my enthusiasm?"

"Are you quite sure that you may not have mentioned the subject to me yourself." Her voice was full of subtle emphasis.

"No, senorita," he laughed. "That will not do. You can not throw me off the track that way, by trying to make me doubt my memory."

"Then, truly, you do not recall the old glad days in Spain?" her voice questioned incredulously, doubted, took on a little fall of disappointment, almost of wounded vanity or sentiment.

"Senorita, emphatically, no. Had I, in the old glad days in Spain, or the old glad days anywhere else, ever met a woman with a voice like yours, I should never have forgotten her in a thousand years. No, senorita. Try something else. That will not do."

"Zip!" There was unmistakable temper in the exclamation.

"We were speaking of b.u.t.terflies," said Hayden, alarmed lest she should ring him off. "Are you at all interested in that line?"

"Indeed, yes," she a.s.sured him, "although I doubt very much if my interest is anything like as scientific as yours. I fancy I am more interested in them because of their wonderful beauty, than for any more particular reason. And what in all the world, senor, is so beautiful as the b.u.t.terflies of the tropics? Do you remember how they come floating out into the sunlight from the dark mysterious depths of the forests?

Such colors! Such iridescence on their wings; but the most beautiful of all are the great gray ones, senor, the silver b.u.t.terflies."

Again Hayden started violently and again succeeded in controlling the surprise her words aroused in him. "I quite agree with you," he said politely. "The silver b.u.t.terfly is one of the most beautiful of all the tropical varieties."

"Yes, truly." Again there was the hint of irresistible laughter in the lady's tones. "But there is a curious little fact that I fancy very few of you naturalists know, and that is that it is not confined absolutely to the tropics. Doubt the a.s.sertion if you will, but I make it calmly: I, senor, with my own eyes have seen silver b.u.t.terflies at New York, and in the most unlikely places; oh, places you would never dream of, the opera, for instance."

"You surprise me!" Hayden was prepared for anything now, and his voice was carefully indifferent, almost drawling; but his mind was working like lightning. What on earth could this mean? Was it a possibility that it might be Marcia,--Marcia Oldham herself, thus cleverly disguising her voice? No, no, a thousand times, no. He hastily rejected the thought.

Even if she possessed the skill--nevertheless the very tones themselves revealed a woman of a totally different type and temperament.

"I am so anxious to see your collection," continued the rich, warmly-colored voice. "I am wondering if you have been able to secure a specimen of a very rare b.u.t.terfly indeed, one which some naturalists believe is quite extinct. It is called 'The Veiled Mariposa.'"

Hayden felt as if in some peculiar, intuitive sort of way, he had expected this from the first. For a moment or two, he could not control his excitement. His mouth felt curiously dry, and he noticed that his hand was trembling.

"I--I think I have heard of it," he said at last, and objurgated himself for his stammering ba.n.a.lity.

"But," and the word seemed to express a pout, "I understood that it was in your collection."

"Ah, one must not trust too much to report and rumor," Hayden reminded her.

"Then it is not in your collection?" she persisted.

"Senorita, my collection is a large one." He smiled amusedly at the thought of this hypothetical collection, and the grandiloquent tone in which he referred to it. "I can not say, offhand, just what varieties it contains."

"True," a.s.sented the voice reasonably, and Hayden felt that its possessor was probably a person who was reasonable when one would naturally expect her to be capricious, and capricious when one would naturally expect her to be reasonable. "True," she repeated thoughtfully, "I only wanted to say, senor, that should you find that you have that particular b.u.t.terfly, I am in touch with certain collectors who would be willing to pay a large price for it."

"I have no desire to sell outright, senorita, please understand that,"

Hayden spoke quickly, taking a high tone. "But should I care to consider your proposition, how am I to communicate with you? Shall I ring up Central and say: 'Please give me the delicious voice?'"

"Ah, senor, you are of an absurdity! Never fear, you will hear from me again, and soon. Good-by." Her voice died away like music.

Hayden mechanically hung up the receiver, and then sat for a moment or two staring rather stupidly before him. At last, he shook his head and laughed in whimsical perplexity: "Who would ever have considered New York the haunt and home of mystery?" he murmured. "Every day connects me with a new one, and the charming ladies who seem involved in them apparently take delight in leaving me completely in the air, suspended, like Mahomet's coffin, 'twixt Heaven and earth, with the pleasing promise that I shall hear from them again--and soon."

CHAPTER VII

An afternoon or two later, having perfected a little plan in his mind, Hayden again called on his cousin to be informed that she was not at home. Kitty, he reflected, was never at home when any one wanted to find her. Therefore, with time on his hands, he turned into the Park and decided to stroll there for an hour or so. It was an almost incredibly mild afternoon for the season of the year, mild and soft and gray; the leafless boughs of the trees upheld the black irregular network of their twigs against the gray sky, with its faint, dull reflection of sunset gold, and the twilight brooded in the mists on the edge of distance as if it awaited the hour to send its gray veils floating over the face of the earth.

Hayden walked slowly, and in this direction or that as his fancy dictated. It was not an afternoon for violent exercise; but for loitering and reverie. Presently, he looked up from his musings, to see, to his infinite surprise and delight, Marcia Oldham approaching him down a twilight vista with the gold behind her.

She, too, was influenced by the day and the hour, for she seemed to walk in a dream, and came quite near him without seeing him. She was all in black, and her furs, also black, were slipping from her shoulders, while her m.u.f.f dangled from a cord about her wrist. Hayden thought she looked a little tired and certainly pale; but that might have been due to the black hat and the lace veil she had thrown back from her face the better to enjoy the air.

She came quite close to him before she saw him, and as she lifted her eyes and met his she started slightly, a start of unmistakable amazement, and as it seemed to him, although perhaps this was but the reflection of his hopes, of pleasure.

"I began to fear that we were never going to meet again," he said after they had exchanged the conventional greetings, and he had asked and had received permission to walk with her in whatever direction she might be taking.

"I have been away for a week," she answered, "and there has been a number of things to see to since my return. I have been very busy. You know I have a studio away from my home where I paint all day. Your cousin has bought a number of my pictures."

"She spoke of them. I am anxious to see them; and I knew you were away,"

he said. "I knew it psychologically. The town was full of people and yet, at the same time, it was very empty." That faint and lovely carnation on her cheek! "And Kitty Hampton told me that you had been away with her,"

he rather tamely concluded.

"Yes," she said, it seemed to him indifferently. Then with a change of tone, as if warning him from dangerous ground: "How absurd our acquaintance has been!"

"Does it strike you so?" he asked sadly. "To me it is the most delightful, the most beautiful thing that ever happened."

"I should not be at all surprised," she said calmly, almost too calmly, and with premeditated irrelevance, "if Kitty and Bea were both of them awaiting me now." His boldness was incapable of ruffling her composure; but, nevertheless, he saw with a secret joy the telltale and uncontrollable carnation again fly to her cheek.

But Hayden had not even approached the limits of his courage. He had been too much baffled in his attempts to find her, she had proved too elusive for him to permit her lightly to slip through his fingers again, as it were, now, when he had the opportunity to press his claims for further recognition. Should a man who had succeeded more than once through bold but not displeasing words in causing the scarlet to stain that cheek of cream, carelessly forgo any chance for future experiment?

"Surely, you won't leave me on your door-step this dreary afternoon," he pleaded. "I would never have suspected you of such hardness of heart.

Why, it amounts almost to--to--brutality," casting about him for a good strong word. "You will pa.s.s on into light and warmth and comfort; tea, the cheering cup, and cakes, no doubt cakes, while I am left out in this gray depressing atmosphere, night coming on, the rain falling--"

"Rain! Oh, nonsense. You have overshot your mark." She lifted her face to the sky. "Not a drop," scornfully.

He stripped his glove from his hand and held out the bare palm. "I thought so," with calm triumph. "A steady drizzle. You don't feel it yet because of your hat; but you will presently. It will very shortly turn to a drenching shower; that especial sort of cloud yonder," waving his stick toward the west, "always indicates a drenching shower. Oh," in answer to her incredulous smile, "you can't tell me anything about weather conditions, I've lived too much in the open not to be thoroughly conversant of them. So you see I know what I'm talking about when I say that a woman who would leave a man on a door-step on an afternoon like this is the kind that would shut up the house and go away for the summer leaving the cat to forage for itself."

"But think of your nice warm apartment, and the subways and street-cars and taxicabs and hansoms which will swiftly bear you thither."