t folly."

She tried to speak several times, before she finally succeeded in saying:

"It's my fault. I mustn't shirk."

I studied her, but I couldn't puzzle her out.

"I've been thinking all along that you were simple and transparent," I
said. "Now, I see you are a mystery. What are you hiding from me?"

Her smile was almost coquettish as she replied:

"When a woman makes a mystery of herself to a man, it's for the man's
good."

I took her hand--almost timidly.

"Anita," I said, "do you still--dislike me?"

"I do not--and shall not--love you," she answered. "But you are--"

"More endurable?" I suggested, as she hesitated.

"Less unendurable," she said with raillery. Then she added, "Less
unendurable than profiting by a-creeping up in the dark."

I thought I understood her better than she understood herself. And suddenly
my passion melted in a tenderness I would have said was as foreign to me
as rain to a desert. I noticed that she had a haggard look. "You are very
tired, child," said I. "Good night. I am a different man from what I was
when I came in here."

"And I a different woman," said she, a beauty shining from her that was as
far beyond her physical beauty as--as love is beyond passion.

"A nobler, better woman," I exclaimed, kissing her hand.

She snatched it away.

"If you only knew!" she cried. "It seems to me, as I realize what sort of
woman I am, that I am almost worthy of _you_!" And she blazed a look
at me that left me rooted there, astounded.

But I went down the avenue with a light heart. "Just like a woman," I was
saying to myself cheerfully, "not to know her own mind."

A few blocks, and I stopped and laughed outright--at Langdon's treachery,
at my own credulity. "What an ass I've been making of myself!" said I to
myself. And I could see myself as I really had been during those months
of social struggling--an ass, braying and gamboling in a lion's skin--to
impress the ladies!

"But not wholly to no purpose," I reflected, again all in a glow at thought
of Anita.

XIX. A WINDFALL FROM "GENTLEMAN JOE"

I went to my rooms, purposing to go straight to bed, and get a good sleep.
I did make a start toward undressing; then I realized that I should only
lie awake with my brain wearing me out, spinning crazy thoughts and schemes
hour after hour--for my imagination rarely lets it do any effective
thinking after the lights are out and the limitations of material things
are wiped a