"Yes."

"Well, just this once then. It'll do you good. And I'll drive as careful
as a farmer."

"All right," she said in low tones, and extended her hand:

"Good night----"

"Good night, teacher!" he responded with a boyish wave of his slender
hand and quickly disappeared in the crowd.

She rushed up the stairs, her cheeks aflame, her heart beating a tattoo
of foolish joy.

She snatched the kitten from sleep and whispered in his tiny ear:

"Oh, Kitty dear, I've had such an adventure! I've spent the happiest,
silliest afternoon of my life! I'm going to have a more wonderful day
tomorrow. I just feel it. In a big racing automobile if you please, Mr.
Thomascat! Sorry I can't take you but the dust would blind you, Kitty
dear. I'm sorry to tell you that you'll have to stay at home all day
alone and keep house. It's too bad. But I'll fix your milk and bread
before I go and you must promise me on your sacred Persian cat's honor
not to look at my birds!"

She hugged him violently and he purred his soft answer in song.

"Oh, Kitty, I'm so happy--so foolishly happy!"

CHAPTER IV. DOUBTS AND FEARS

Mary attempted no analysis of her emotions. It was all too sudden,
too stunning. She was content to feel and enjoy the first overwhelming
experience of life. Hour after hour she lay among the pillows of her
couch in the dim light of the street lamps and lazily watched the
passing Saturday evening crowds. The world was beautiful.

She undressed at last and went to bed, only to toss wide-eyed for hours.

A hundred times she reenacted the scene in the Library and recalled
her first impression of Jim's personality. What could such an utterly
unforeseen and extraordinary meeting mean except that it was her Fate?
Certainly he could not have planned it. Certainly she had not foreseen
such an event. It had never occurred to her in the wildest flights of
fancy that she could meet and speak to a man under such conditions,
to say nothing of the walk in the Park and the hours she spent in the
little summer house.

And the strangest part of it all was that she could see nothing wrong
in it from beginning to end. It had happened in the simplest and most
natural way imaginable. By the standards of conventional propriety her
act was the maddest folly; and yet she was still happy over it.

There was one disquieting trait about him that made her a little uneasy.
He used the catch-words of the street gamins of New York without any