he girl was already babbling in
delirium?

"And all the time," she presently went on, "I'll simply be sick a-bed,
picking at the covers, all blue around the gills. That'll be me, while
you're off to your old motion picture--'the so-called art of the motion
picture,'" she concluded with a careful imitation of her father's
manner.

He tried to determine whether she were serious or jesting. You never
could tell about this girl. Whatever it was, it made him uneasy.

Outside he wished to take her home in a taxi-cab, but she would not hear
to this. "We'll use the town-car, Gaston," she announced with a flash of
her old manner as she waved to an on-coming street-car. During the
long ride that followed she was silent but restless, tapping her foot,
shifting in her seat, darting her head about. The one thing she did
steadily was to clutch his arm.

During the walk from the car to the Montague house she twice indulged in
her little dance step, even as she clung to the arm, but each Lime she
seemed to think little of it and resumed a steady pace, her head down.
The house was dark. Without speaking she unlocked the door and drew him
into the little parlour.

"Stand right on that spot," she ordered, with a final pat of his
shoulder, and made her way to the dining room beyond where she turned on
a single light that faintly illumined the room in which he waited. She
came back to him, removed the small cloth hat, tossed it to a chair, and
faced him silently.

The light from the other room shone across her eyes and revealed them to
him shadowy and mysterious. Her face was set in some ominous control.
At last she looked away from him and began in a strained voice, "If
anything happens to me--"

He thought it time to end this nonsense. She might be feverish, but it
could be nothing so serious as she was intimating. He clutched the gift.
"Sarah," he said lightly, "I got a little something for you--see what I
mean?" He thrust the package into her weakly yielding hands.

She studied it in the dusk, turning it over and over. Then with no word
to him she took it to the dining room where under the light she opened
it. He heard a smothered exclamation that seemed more of dismay than
the delight he expected, though he saw that she was holding the watch
against her wrist. She came back to the dusk of the parlour, beginning
on the way one of her little skipping dance steps, which she quickly
suppressed. She was replacing the watch on its