hy 'just now'?" demanded Ann.

"I had an idea I should find her here when I opened the door," he
answered. "You were standing in the shadow. It seemed to be just what
I had expected."

"You would have been satisfied?" she asked.

"Yes," he said.

There was silence for a moment.

"Uncle Ab made a mistake," he continued. "He ought to have sent me
away. Let me come home now and then."

"You mean," said Ann, "that if you had seen less of me you might have
liked me better?"

"Quite right," he admitted. "We never see the things that are always
there."

"A thin, gawky girl with a bad complexion," she suggested. "Would it
have been of any use?"

"You must always have been wonderful with those eyes," he answered.
"And your hands were beautiful even then."

"I used to cry sometimes when I looked at myself in the glass as a
child," she confessed. "My hands were the only thing that consoled me."

"I kissed them once," he told her. "You were asleep, curled up in
Uncle Ab's chair."

"I wasn't asleep," said Ann.

She was seated with one foot tucked underneath her. She didn't look a
bit grown up.

"You always thought me a fool," he said.

"It used to make me so angry with you," said Ann, "that you seemed to
have no go, no ambition in you. I wanted you to wake up--do something.
If I had known you were a budding genius--"

"I did hint it to you," said he.

"Oh, of course it was all my fault," said Ann.

He rose. "You think she means to come?" he asked. Ann also had risen.

"Is she so very wonderful?" she asked.

"I may be exaggerating to myself," he answered. "But I am not sure
that I could go on with my work without her--not now."

"You forgot her," flashed Ann, "till we happened to quarrel in the cab."

"I often do," he confessed. "Till something goes wrong. Then she
comes to me. As she did on that first evening, six years ago. You
see, I have been more or less living with her since then," he added
with a smile.

"In dreamland," Ann corrected.

"Yes, but in my case," he answered, "the best part of my life is passed
in dreamland."

"And when you are not in dreamland?" she demanded. "When you're just
irritable, short-tempered, cranky Matthew Pole. What's she going to do
about you then?"

"She'll put up with me," said Matthew.

"No she won't," said Ann. "She'll snap your head off. Most of the
'putting up with' you'll have to do."

He tried to get between her and the window, but s