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"I'm not smiling at the possibility of there being social life in Sacramento," he said, "though I'm ready to smile at the idea that there shouldn't be. There is cream in the milk of London—why should I laugh at the suggestion that the milk of California is not altogether creamless? No, I was thinking how curiously unlike my ideas of a reporter you are. That is an impertinence——"

"It isn't," she said ruefully. "I look horribly unsophisticated, and I suppose I am. But that is another story, Dr. Eversham. To take a very short cut to the object of my visit, the Herald has paid my expenses to Europe to find Oscar Trevors."

"And when you find him, what then?" asked the man, his eyes twinkling.

There was an awkward silence.

"I don't know," she confessed. "If I find him in the circumstances I fear, there will be a great story. If not, my story will end a little flatly—if he is alive."

The doctor nodded.

"He is alive. I am convinced of that," he said. "He is also mad, I am equally satisfied."

"Mad?" Her eyes opened wide. "You don't mean that he is really insane?"