l slowly, and she stroked her muff with one white hand.

The man spoke on, musingly. "I suppose even you do not realize the
good he does--the help he gives to others. He doesn't talk of
himself--he never did--even to you, I suppose? No? It is like him, he
was always so. It was--it was in the cemetery I saw him this morning.
I--when I come home--I always go there--my mother is there, you
remember--I found him by--by your little boy. He was talking, with the
sexton when I came up. It seems the grass didn't grow about the little
fellow's--bed. The man admitted that his own little folks were
accustomed to play there--the lot is shady and close to the
house--they bring their toys and frolic there till the grass is quite
worn away. You should have seen his face when the man told him that.
'Let them come,' he said; 'don't stop them; the grass doesn't matter.'
'The boy won't be so lonely,' said he to me. 'It seems so far away out
here--and he all by himself--he was such a little chap--I sort of feel
one of us ought to stay with him--at night.'"

The woman raised her eyes to his face. "Ah," she said, softly, "did
he--did he say that?"

"Yes--and it goes to show, what you doubtless know better than I, how
deep and true and tender he is beneath it all. Shan't I lay this coat
more about you? I think the air has grown chillier."

"No, thank you," she said, rising. "Yes, it is chillier."

The man rose also. She stood a moment--her hand on the little gate,
her eyes grown dark and deep. He waited at her side.

Her fingers sought the latch absently.

"Let me open it for you," he said. "Were you going into town, or did
you come for the walk?"

"I?" she said. "Oh, I told Jules not to come back for me--it's a short
walk home." She smiled up at him for the first time with her old-time
brightness. "And you," she said, "you haven't completed the round of
your 'old friends' yet--you will come with me."

BAS BLEU

By ANNA A. ROGERS

_Author of "PEACE AND THE VICES"_

That his wife was keeping something from him had been unpleasantly
apparent to Robert Penn for over two months; but what really wore upon
his easily disturbed nerves was the equally obvious fact that her
secret was the source of an unusual, unnatural, unseemly happiness,
which she took no pains to disguise.

Robert was the very much overworked junior partner in the prosperous
law firm of Messrs. Flagg, Bentnor & Penn; and the question of his
taking a much-n