on the paper. "Wassa meanin' of this
item, f'rinstance? Highway robbery, thassa meanin' of it. My wife take
breakfast in her room? I'd like to see her try it!"

Sheila went upstairs. She took off her things, washed off the dust, and
changed into the black-and-white barmaid's costume, fastening the frilly
apron, the cuffs, the delicate fichu with mechanical care. She put on the
silk stockings and the buckled shoes and the tiny cap. Then she went into
her sitting-room, chose the most dignified chair, folded her hands in
her lap, and waited for Dickie. Waiting, she looked out through the
window and saw the glow fade from the snowy crest of The Hill. The
evening star let itself delicately down through the sweeping shadows of
the earth from some mysterious fastness of invisibility. The room was dim
when Dickie's knock made her turn her head.

"Come in."

He appeared, shut the door without looking at her, then came unwillingly
across the carpet and stopped at about three steps from her chair,
standing with one hand in his pocket. He had slicked down his hair with
a wet brush and changed his suit. It was the dark-blue serge he had worn
at the dance five months before. What those five months had been to
Dickie, through what abasements and exaltations, furies and despairs he
had traveled since he had looked up from Sheila's slippered feet with
his heart turned backward like a pilot's wheel, was only faintly
indicated in his face. And yet the face gave Sheila a pang. And,
unsupported by anger, he was far from formidable, a mere youth. Sheila
wondered at her long and sustained persecution of him. She smiled, her
lips, her eyes, and her heart.

"Aren't you going to sit down, Dickie? This isn't a school examination."

"If it was," said Dickie, with an uncertain attempt at ease, "I wouldn't
pass." He felt for a chair and got into it. He caught a knee in his hand
and looked about him. "You've made the room awful pretty, Sheila."

She had spent some of the rather large pay she drew upon coverings of
French blue for the plush furniture, upon a dainty yellow porcelain
tea-set, upon little oddments of decoration. The wall-paper and carpet
were inoffensive, the quietest probably in Millings, so that her efforts
had met with some success. There was a lounge with cushions, there were
some little volumes, a picture of her father, a bowl of pink wild roses,
a vase of vivid cactus flowers. Some sketches in water-color--Marcus's
most happy