d upon her vehemently. "May I ask you never to waste my time
with questions of that sort. I never--_never_--say anything until I have
fully made up my mind about it. Good-morning."

"No, no, no! Don't go yet! Please--I want to speak to you a minute."

He stopped and turned, but did not retrace the three steps he had taken.
Sharlee leaned against the door and looked away from him, out into the
park.

The little Doctor was badly in need of a surgical operation. Somebody
must perform it for him, or his whole life was a dusty waste. That he
still had glimmerings, he had shown this very hour, in wanting to make a
gift to his sick little fellow-lodger. His resentment over his dismissal
from the _Post_, too, was an unexpectedly human touch in him. But in the
same breath with these things the young man had showed himself at his
worst: the glimmerings were so overlaid with an incredible snobbery of
the mind, so encrusted with the rankest and grossest egotism, that soon
they must flutter and die out, leaving him stone-blind against the
sunshine and the morning. No scratch could penetrate that Achilles-armor
of self-sufficiency. There must be a shock to break it apart, or a
vicious stabbing to cut through it to such spark as was still alive.

Somebody must administer that shock or do that stabbing. Why not she? He
would hate the sight of her forevermore, but ...

"Mr. Queed," said Sharlee, turning toward him, "you let me see, from
what you are doing this morning, that you think of Fifi as your friend.
I'd like to ask if you think of me in that way, too."

O Lord, _Lord!_ Here was another one!

"No," he said positively. "Think of you as I do of Fifi! No, no! No, I
do not."

"I don't mean to ask if you think of me as you do of Fifi. Of course I
am sure you don't. I only mean--let me put it this way: Do you believe
that I have your--interests at heart, and would like to do anything I
could to help you?"

He thought this over warily. Doubtless doomed Smathers would have smiled
to note the slowness with which his great rival's mind threshed out such
a question as this.

"If you state your proposition in that way, I reply, tentatively, yes."

"Then can you spare me half an hour to-night after supper?"

"For what purpose?"

"For you and me," she smiled. "I'd like you to come and see me, at my
house, where we could really have a little talk. You see, I know Colonel
Cowles very well indeed, and I have read the _Post_ for oh,