in an easy-chair. "I
don't quite see why!"

"The fact remains that I was," he answered, with the faintest of smiles.

"Were you also pleased, by any chance?"

"Suppose we say I was--well, dazzled," said Mark, drawing closer to her
chair.

"The simple explanation must be," returned Carrissima, with a tremor in
her voice, "that Bridget said eight, and we understood half-past seven."

"In that event we must have been dreaming!"

"But then," she suggested, "it isn't likely that two persons would
dream the same thing, is it?"

"Oh well, I'm not certain," said Mark, and he rested a hand on the arm
of her chair.

"You see, Bridget invited me when I was here last week," Carrissima
explained. "I might easily have made a blunder."

"She wrote to me," was the answer. "I have it in black and white.
There's no getting out of that."

"It must be a quarter to eight!" Carrissima suggested.

"Seventeen minutes to," said Mark, taking out his watch.

"I hope no accident has happened," suggested Carrissima, and bringing
forward a chair, he sat down close to her side. "One is reminded," she
added, "of a certain evening when Lawrence and Phoebe waited for
you--do you remember?"

"Oh dear, yes," said Mark, passing a hand over his forehead. "Let us
hope these people won't be quite so much behind as I was!"

"Are you afraid of being bored?" asked Carrissima. "Or are you merely
hungry?"

"It seems a long time since I saw you last," he remarked.

"Whose fault was that?"

"My misfortune, anyhow," he admitted.

"You had only to come to Grandison Square," said Carrissima. "You knew
I was always on view!"

They both lapsed into silence, thinking in common of his last visit to
Colonel Faversham's, when, perhaps, neither of them had shown to the
best advantage.

"It's difficult to shut one's mind to facts," exclaimed Mark suddenly.

"I fancy I have heard you protest that few things can be more
misleading," she retorted.

He sat leaning forward in his chair, close to Carrissima's, his arms
resting on his knees.

"Yes, that's all right," he said. "But I have sometimes to advise
patients to submit to operations, thinking how I should hate the ordeal
on my own account. I quite understand that the only way is often to
shut one's eyes. Life seems to include a good many things which simply
won't bear thinking about. One realizes the fact, yet goes on thinking
of them just the same."

"Well," murmured Carrissima, "yo