occurred to Mrs. Rand at all.

Lizzie objected to all innocent amusement and she would, in all
likelihood, object now.

However, when Mrs. Rand with a fearful mind said, "Oh, Lizzie dear, I've
had such a delightful afternoon. I went to _Love and the King_ and
it was too charming--you ought to go, really--and Mr. Breton's coming to
dinner to-night," Lizzie only smiled a little and asked whether there
was food enough. Lizzie was _so_ strange....

Alone in her bedroom Lizzie wondered at her excitement. She looked at
her trim, neat figure in the glass, with the hair so gravely brushed,
with her collar and her cuffs, with her compact businesslike air: what
had she to do with excitement because a young man was coming to dinner?
"It must be because I'm tired--this heat," she said to the mirror. And
the mirror replied, "You know that you are glad because your sister
Daisy is away."

And to that she had no answer.

When he arrived he was grave and seemed sad and tired, she thought.
Dinner was a serious affair and Mrs. Rand, who disliked people when they
refused to respond to her moods, wished, at first, that she had not
asked him, and felt sure that there was much truth in what people said
about his wickedness.

Then, when dinner was nearly over, he brightened up and told stories and
was entertaining. Mrs. Rand noticed that he drank much claret, but this
was, after all, a compliment to her housekeeping. By the end of dinner
Mrs. Rand almost loved him and wished that Daisy had been here to
entertain him.

Of course it must be dull for a man with only a plain cut-and-dried girl
like Lizzie for company.

Lizzie, meanwhile, knew that he was waiting for an opportunity of
speech. She had read an appeal in his eyes when he had first entered the
room, and now she sat there, curiously, ironically amused at her own
agitation. "Lizzie Rand," she said to herself, "you're only, after all,
the kind of fool that you despise other people for being. What are you
after in this _galere_?"

Nevertheless even now, in retrospect, how arid and sterile seemed all
those other active useful days. One moment's little grain of sentiment
and a life's hard work goes for nothing in comparison.

After dinner, when the lamp burnt brightly and the furniture seemed to
be less anxious to fill every possible space and the windows were opened
into the square with its stars and grey shadows, the room seemed, of a
sudden, comfortable, and Mrs. Rand, sitti