all, that I shall be engaged to-night. Can you
not come to-morrow night instead? I am eager for a talk with you."

"Could" he come! He laughed as he put the thing tenderly away. Could he
come, indeed! Could he stay away?

But early in the evening of that same forbidden day he walked to Ninth
Street, entering that thoroughfare furtively. He might not see her for
another day, but at least he could look fondly at the door by which she
had entered, and gaze on the stanch house that enfolded her, even on the
steps that must have felt her light, quick tread, perhaps within the
hour.

These things would help him to believe in her actuality--she had so come
to seem but a dream lady to him.

Thrice he passed the house on the opposite side of the street. A dim
light glowed through the curtained windows. Beyond them, he thought, she
would be talking; laughing, perhaps; perhaps even thinking of him at
that very moment as she gazed absently at some speaker who thought to
have her attention. If only she, too, could be counting the hours! But
that was too unlikely. He warned himself not to imagine that. He
recalled some of Teevan's speeches about women--"Shallow, pretty fools,
for man's amusing--the Oriental alone, my boy, has a sane theory of
women; creatures to be kept as choice cabinet bits--under lock and key."
Poor Teevan, not to have known the one woman who could have illumined
his darkness! Poor Teevan, indeed! He idly wondered if his affair--that
troublesome affair of which the little man had spoken so feelingly--had
been "broken off."

He slowly walked once more past the Bartell house, beholding a splendid
vision of himself as he would leap up those steps the next evening. Then
he continued on past Teevan's house, regarding that, also, with great
kindness. He stopped a little beyond this, meaning to return. As he did
so the door opened and a woman came out. He thought there was something
furtive in her glance up and down the street as she paused to gather up
her skirts. Then something familiar in the feminine grace of that
movement chained him. Surely, but one person had ever done the thing in
just that way. There could be no other. He stood staring while she came
down the steps and into the light of a street lamp. It was Mrs. Laithe,
walking briskly now, toward her own home. He could not mistake that
free-swinging, level, deliberate stride, with the head so finely up.

He almost cried out to her in his gladness. He fel