hat I have permission," he
apologized, with a deprecatory little laugh.

"We seldom do things in this world," he went on at once, "unless we
want to, or unless the alternative of not doing them is more
unpleasant." He merged generalities into a more specific assertion.
"There was no alternative in your requesting me to call. Candidly, why
do I interest you?"

His voice was alive, and the woman, now thoroughly mistress of
herself, gazed into the frankest of frank gray eyes.

"I scarcely know," she said, weighing her answer. "Perhaps it was the
novel experience of being considered--sexless; of being classified by
a number, like a beetle in a case. Let me answer with another
question: Why did I interest you sufficiently to come?"

He sat in the big chair with his chin in his hand, looking now
steadily past and beyond her, one foot restlessly tapping the rug.

"I can't answer without it seeming so hopelessly egotistical." The
half-whimsical, half-serious smile returned to his eyes. "Don't let me
impose upon your leniency, please; I may wish to make a request
sometime again."

"I will accept the responsibility," she insisted.

"On your head, then, the consequences." He spoke lightly, but with a
note of restlessness and rebellion.

"To me you are attractive, Miss Willis, because you are everything
that I am not. With you there is no necessity higher than the present;
no responsibility beyond the chance thought of the moment. You choose
your surroundings, your thoughts. Your life is what you make it: it is
life."

"You certainly would not charge me with being more independent than
you?" protested the girl.

"Independent!" he flashed upon her, and she knew she had stirred
something lying close to his soul. His voice grew soft, and he repeated
the word, musingly, more to himself than to her: "Independent!"

"Yes," with abrupt feeling, "with the sort of independence that
chooses its own manner of absolute dependence; with the independence
that gives you only so much of my time, so that the remainder may go
to another; with the independence of imperative impartiality; the sort
of independence that is never through working and planning for
others--that's the independence I know."

"But there are breathing-spells," interrupted Miss Willis, smilingly.
"To-night, for example, you are not working for somebody else."

"You compel me to incriminate myself," he rejoined, the whimsical,
half-serious smile again lighting hi