e
really atoned for. The wild romance and confidence in this first visit
could never be regained.

And then there was a loud, quick ring at the bell, and at once he was in
the room, breathing rapidly, as if he had run up-stairs or even from the
corner. She could do nothing but stare at him. She had tried in the last
ten minutes to remember what he looked like, and now she was astonished
to find how exactly he looked as she remembered him.

To her horror, the change between her late despair and her present joy
was so extreme that she wanted to cry. The best she knew how to do was to
pucker her face into a smile and to offer him those chilly finger-tips.

He hardly took them, but said, as if announcing a black, but
incontrovertible, fact:

"You're not a bit glad to see me."

"Oh, yes, I am," she returned, with an attempt at an easy social manner.
"Will you have some tea?"

"But why aren't you glad?"

Miss Severance clasped her hands on the edge of the tea-tray and looked
down. She pressed her palms together; she set her teeth, but the muscles
in her throat went on contracting; and the heroic struggle was lost.

"I thought you weren't coming," she said, and making no further effort
to conceal the fact that her eyes were full of tears she looked straight
up at him.

He sat down beside her on the small, low sofa and put his hand on hers.

"But I was perfectly certain to come," he said very gently, "because, you
see, I think I love you."

"Do you think I love you?" she asked, seeking information.

"I can't tell," he answered. "Your being sorry I did not come doesn't
prove anything. We'll see. You're so wonderfully young, my dear!"

"I don't think eighteen is so young. My mother was married before she
was twenty."

He sat silent for a few seconds, and she felt his hand shut more firmly
on hers. Then he got up, and, pulling a chair to the opposite side of
the table, said briskly:

"And now give me some tea. I haven't had any lunch."

"Oh, why not?" She blew her nose, tucked away her handkerchief, and began
her operations on the tea-tray.

"I work very hard," he returned. "You don't know what at, do you? I'm a
statistician."

"What's that?"

"I make reports on properties, on financial ventures, for the firm I'm
with, Benson & Honaton. They're brokers. When they are asked to
underwrite a scheme--"

"Underwrite? I never heard that word."

The boy laughed.

"You'll hear it a good many times if our acqu