in!

Alva had departed; Anita was waiting for me in her sitting-room. When she
heard me in the hall, just outside, she stood in the doorway. "Come in,"
she said to me, who did not dare so much as a glance at her.

I entered. I must have looked as I felt--like a boy, summoned before
the teacher to be whipped in presence of the entire school. Then I was
conscious that she had my hand--how she had got it, I don't know--and that
she was murmuring, with tears of happiness in her voice: "Oh, I can't
_say_ it!"

"Glad you like your own taste," said I awkwardly. "You know, Alva told me."

"But it's one thing to dream, and a very different thing to do," she
answered. Then, with smiling reproach: "And I've been thinking all summer
that you were ruined! I've been expecting to hear every day that you had
had to give up the fight."

"Oh--that passed long ago," said I.

"But you never told me," she reminded me. "And I'm glad you didn't,"
she added. "Not knowing saved me from doing something very foolish."
She reddened a little, smiled a great deal, dazzlingly, was altogether
different from the ice-locked Anita of a short time before, different as
June from January. And her hand--so intensely alive--seemed extremely
comfortable in mine.

Even as my blood responded to that electric touch, I had a twinge of
cynical bitterness. Yes, apparently I was at last getting what I had so
long, so vainly, and, latterly, so hopelessly craved. But--_why_ was
she giving it? Why had she withheld herself until this moment of material
happiness? "I have to pay the rich man's price," thought I, with a sigh.

It was in reaching out for some sweetness to take away this bitter taste in
my honey that I said to her, "When you gave me that money from your uncle,
you did it to help me out?"

She colored deeply. "How silly you must have thought me!" she answered.

I took her other hand. As I was drawing her toward me, the sudden pallor of
her face and chill of her hands halted me once more, brought sickeningly
before me the early days of my courtship when she had infuriated my pride
by trying to be "submissive." I looked round the room--that room into which
I had put so much thought--and money. Money! "The rich man's price!" those
delicately brocaded walls shimmered mockingly at me.

"Anita," said I, "do you _care_ for me?"

She murmured inaudibly. Evasion! thought I, and suspicion sprang on guard,
bristling.

"Anita," I repeated sternly, "do you