n silence. Several moments elapsed before Olga was
able to control herself. Then she asked, without looking at Millar, and
her voice was dry with pain:

"Did--did Karl read the letter?"

"Oh, yes," Millar said, with another sip of tea.

"Oh, God! too late!" she cried.

Millar arose and stood behind Olga's chair, leaning over her and
speaking in a soft, low voice.

"After he read the letter he buried his face in his pillow and wept," he
said.

"He wept?"

"Yes; he wept with joy. I do not like men who weep."

Olga did not heed his flippancy. She looked up at him imploringly.

"I did not want him to get that letter," she said. "I came to ask him to
give it back to me unopened. I am too late."

"It is not you who are too late; it was I who was too early," Millar
said deprecatingly.

"Oh, is this life really a serious matter?" Olga exclaimed; "when
everything can depend upon one's getting here a few moments before or a
few minutes after 3 o'clock?"

"That is it exactly," Millar said. "We should not take it so seriously."

Olga looked thoughtfully away from him and said to herself softly:

"He wept."

"From joy," Millar repeated after her, in the same soft voice.

"I am afraid to speak to him, and yet I must," Olga cried, starting up.
"I would like to go far, far away, but I cannot. Something seems to hold
me here. I cannot, cannot go. What will become of me?"

"You will be very happy and will make Karl very happy," Millar said.

Heinrich entered and took the tea-things.

"Mr. Karl will be down in a moment," he said.

Olga clasped her hands tragically and turned an imploring face on
Millar, who started for the studio door.

"Good-by," he said. "I will leave you to speak to Karl alone."

"Please don't go," Olga implored.

"I can hardly remain under the circumstances," he said.

He knew that to further his design Karl and Olga should meet quite
alone. He would see to it that even old Heinrich did not interrupt them
until Olga had repeated her confession of love, and the hoax of the
letter had been revealed. Then he would reappear, with the letter, and
they might read it together.

Olga knew that her own frail, feminine heart would give way if she were
left alone to meet Karl. Evil as she believed Millar to be, yet she
dreaded his going now.

"I am afraid to be alone with him," she said. "Won't you please stay?"

"But if I stay, how could you speak to Karl about the letter?" Millar
asked. "And