d been originally sewn upon a gown, or some other article of dress,
from which it had been violently torn away.

The thing was so impossible--preposterous!--that he sat as if stunned,
eyes a-stare, jaw dropping, wits bemused; until abruptly roused by the
sharp barking of a taxicab horn as it swung round the corner of Fourth
Avenue and the subsequent grumble of its motor in the street below.

Thrusting the velvet knot into his pocket he ran down and opened the
front door just as Alison gained the top of the brownstone steps.

He noticed that her taxicab was waiting.

Still in her shimmering, silken, summery dinner-gown of the earlier
evening, a light chiffon wrap draped round her shoulders, she entered
the vestibule, paused and stood smiling mischievously into his grave,
enquiring eyes.

"Surprised you--eh, Staff?" she laughed.

"Rather," said he, bending over her hand and wondering at her high
spirit of gaiety so sharply in contrast with her determined and
domineering humour of a few hours since. "Why?" he asked, shutting the
outside door.

"Just wanted to see you alone for a few moments; I've something to say
to you--something very important and surprising.... But not down here."

"I beg your pardon," he said contritely. He motioned toward the stairs:
"There's no elevator, but it's only one flight up ..."

"No elevator! Heavens!" she cried in mock horror. "And this is how the
other half lives!"

She caught up her skirts and ran up the stairs with footsteps so light
that he could hear nothing but the soft, continuous murmuring of her
silken gown.

"Genius," he said, ironic, as he followed her--"Genius frequently needs
a lift but is more often to be found in an apartment without one. Permit
me"--he flung wide the door to his study--"to introduce you to the
garret."

"So this is where you starve and write!"

Alison paused near the centre of the room, shrugging her wrap from her
shoulders and dropping it carelessly on the table. He saw her shoot
swift glances round her with bright, prying eyes.

"I'm afraid I'm not enough of a genius to starve," he said; "but anyway,
here's where I write."

"How interesting!" she drawled in a tone that conveyed to him the
impression she found it anything but that. And then, a trace sharply:
"Please shut the door."

He lifted his brows in surprise, said "Oh?" and turning back did as
bid. At the same time Alison disposed herself negligently in a capacious
wing-chair.