nce and by training--she, the daughter of a
great and simple and noble man----

"You'll come again?" she said, and there was the note in her voice that
made his nerves grow tense and vibrate.

But he seemed not to have heard her question. Still at the unopened
door, he folded his arms upon his chest and said, speaking rapidly yet
with the deliberation of one who has thought out his words in advance:

"I don't know what kind of girl you are. I never have known. I've never
wanted to know. If you told me you were--what is called good, I'd doubt
it. If you told me you weren't, I'd want to kill you and myself. They
say there's a fatal woman for every man and a fatal man for every woman.
I always laughed at the idea--until you. I don't know what to make of
myself."

She suddenly laid her finger on her lips. It irritated him, to discover
that, as he talked, speaking the things that came from the very depths
of his soul, she had been giving him only part of her attention, had
been listening for a step on the stairs. He was hearing the ascending
step now. He frowned. "Can't you send him away?" he asked.

"I must," said she in a low tone. "It wouldn't do for him to know you
were here. He has strict ideas--and is terribly jealous."

A few seconds of silence, then a knock on the other side of the door.

"Who's there?" she called.

"I'm a little early," came in an agreeable, young man's voice. "Aren't
you ready?"

"Not nearly," replied she, in a laughing, innocent voice. "You'll have
to go away for half an hour."

"I'll wait out here on the steps."

Her eyes were sparkling. A delicate color had mounted to her skin.
Norman, watching her jealously, clinched his strong jaws. She said:
"No--you must go clear away. I don't want to feel that I'm being
hurried. Don't come back until a quarter past four."

"All right. I'm crazy to see you." This in the voice of a lover. She
smiled radiantly at Norman, as if she thought he would share in her
happiness at these evidences of her being well loved. The unseen young
man said: "Exactly a quarter past. What time does your clock say it is
now?"

"A quarter to," replied she.

"That's what my watch says. So there'll be no mistake. For half an
hour--good-by!"

"Half an hour!" she called.

She and Norman stood in silence until the footsteps died away. Then she
said crossly to Norman: "You ought to have gone before. I don't like to
do these things."

"You do them well," said he, wi