thing! Guess you will have to cut it. I'll tell you everything later.'
"I examined the ornament and was puzzled to find it apparently seamless, yet it passed directly through a hole in the septum of the nose. So I cut it with a hack-saw, bent the ends apart, and drew it out.
"'How did you get this thing on, Mrs. Rey?' I queried. 'It was one solid piece without any seam so far as I can see.'
"'That is a part of the mystery,' she replied. 'that even I can't explain. But, please, can t you give me just a little bite to eat? I'm starving, and—I'm—afraid I'll faint again if you don't. I—I—can pay you with this gold jewelry if you like. You have a bath-room, of course? Next to food I think I need a bath more than anything else in the world.'
"The maid brought her coffee and bread, as supper was not yet ready, and she really did eat as if famished.
"'Now I feel better,' she announced. 'Oh, don't look at me like that, I'm perfectly all right. Now, how about the bath—may I? And could Mrs. Branson lend me an old wrapper or something until I can buy clothes of my own? I'd like to see these rags burned. If you are afraid I might steal something, Mrs. Branson can watch me in the bath-room and while I'm dressing. In fact, I wish she would.'
"Mrs. Branson went with her.
"My wife came back a few minutes later, however. 'She's all right,' she reported. 'Somehow, I trust her. I have laid out some real pretty things for her to wear.'
TIME passed, and still more time, plenty for even a woman to bathe and dress. Supper was getting cold, but still our mysterious guest failed to appear. At last my wife could stand it no longer, and made a dash for the bedroom, where she had left the clothing. She told me later that she had found Mrs. Rey, in tears, sitting on the floor, with the garments piled around her.
"'Oh, Mrs. Branson,' she sobbed, 'I have lived with people who do not dress this way, for years, and I don't know how to put on these clothes, especially that!' (She pointed to the corset). 'And which is front and which is back of these other things? If I put anything on wrong and anyone noticed it, I think I'd die of mortification. And my hair—I have worn it loose or done up in Indian fashion for so long, I don't know any other style, except the way it is now, which I invented myself. Won't you help me, please?'
"After another half-hour or three-quarters, both appeared. Mrs. Rey was really handsome, when properly gowned. She still wore her quaint earrings and I now noticed a wedding-ring on her finger.
"We were eager, of course, to hear her story, but she avoided the subject until after supper. At last she began:
"'I know you are aching to hear my story, but I have thought over the whole thing carefully, and I can't—I just simply can't—tell you everything, for I know you could not possibly believe me. I have the whole story written out, though, except the last part—this I will finish and leave the whole thing for you to read after I have gone. I could not stand having you read it while I am here.
"'I can say, though, that I have passed through a terrible experience, which has robbed me, in a way, of my identity; it was a dreadful illness. After that I lived for years among the Indians back in the mountains, in an isolated village of the Aztecs. That is where I got the ornaments you think so curious.
