ay upon the hearth
ready to light at the invalid's coming. Phebe too sprang from the sofa as
she spoke, as if her words had evoked too vivid a picture, and kneeling
down by the hearth, applied a match. The bright flame leaped swiftly up
and filled all the room with a flickering golden glow. Gerald turned in
the window to watch it. How quickly it had flushed Phebe's cheeks, and
how soft her eyes looked in its light!

"It's downright cruelty to spoil our first cool evening with a fire,
Phebe, but I'll forgive you, it makes you look so pretty," she said,
quite unconscious of her beauty as she stood against the dark background
of the curtain in picturesque stateliness, her dress of soft cream-white
cloth falling in clinging folds about her, and her clear pale face turned
dreamily toward the light, which gleamed out in fitful reflection from
the heavy gold ornaments at her throat and wrists.

"Ah, you do not see yourself!" murmured Phebe, looking adoringly back at
her. "No one else could look pretty to you if you did."

"How foolish!" said Gerald, scornfully. "Pray don't let us begin bandying
compliments back and forth. That's next worse to eternally discussing
love. Why it is that two girls seem never able to talk together half an
hour without lugging in that threadbare subject as if it were the one
most important thing in the world, I don't understand."

"Well, isn't love the most important thing,--to women?" asked Phebe,
sitting down on the floor to nurse the fire, her thin muslin making a
little ripple of pretty lightness around her.

"No, it isn't," replied Gerald. "It may be to some few perhaps, but
certainly not to all women. It isn't to me. It's one thing; not every
thing; and not even the best thing. Knowledge is better, and goodness is
better, and to come down to purely personal blessings, health is better,
and so is common-sense better, and in the long run there are dozens of
things infinitely better worth having and better worth aiming for. It's a
good enough thing to have in addition, but as to its being the sum and
substance, the Alpha and Omega, of any sensible woman's life, that's all
foolishness. Let's have done with it and order in the lights. I want to
get at Euclid again. It will never do for that conceited Yale brother of
mine to get ahead of me. Shall I call to Nancy?"

"No use. The servants are out. Wait a moment till the fire is well
started, and I'll bring in the lamp."

"The servants are out?