that and to wish to
give him time; for, without regarding him in the least, and as though
to establish the fact that she had come to stay, she began calmly and
deliberately to remove the bell-like hat. This accomplished, she bent
toward him, her eyes looking straight into his, her smile reproaching
him. In the familiar tone of an old and dear friend she said to him
gently:

"This is the day you planned for me. Don't you think you've wasted quite
enough of it?"

Sam looked back into the eyes, and saw in them no trace of laughter or
of mockery, but, instead, gentle reproof and appeal--and something else
that, in turn, begged of him to be gentle.

For a moment, too disturbed to speak, he looked at her, miserably,
remorsefully.

"It's not Anita Flagg at all," he said. "It's Sister Anne come back to
life again!" The girl shook her head.

"No; it's Anita Flagg. I'm not a bit like the girl you thought you met
and I did say all the things Holworthy told you I said; but that
was before I understood--before I read what you wrote about Sister
Anne--about the kind of me you thought you'd met. When I read that I
knew what sort of a man you were. I knew you had been really kind and
gentle, and I knew you had dug out something that I did not know was
there--that no one else had found. And I remembered how you called me
Sister. I mean the way you said it. And I wanted to hear it again. I
wanted you to say it."

She lifted her face to his. She was very near him--so near that her
shoulder brushed against his arm. In the box above them her friends,
scandalized and amused, were watching her with the greatest interest.
Half of the people in the now half-empty house were watching them with
the greatest interest. To them, between reading advertisements on the
programme and watching Anita Flagg making desperate love to a lucky
youth in the front row, there was no question of which to choose.

The young people in the front row did not know they were observed.
They were alone--as much alone as though they were seated in a biplane,
sweeping above the clouds.

"Say it again," prompted Anita Flagg "Sister."

"I will not!" returned the young man firmly. "But I'll say this," he
whispered: "I'll say you're the most wonderful, the most beautiful, and
the finest woman who has ever lived!"

Anita Flagg's eyes left his quickly; and, with her head bent, she stared
at the bass drum in the orchestra.

"I don't know," she said, "but that sounds