at down this
girl's reserve, but all his attempts at passionate love-making left her
unresponsive. She would draw back, as it were, into her shell, and for
days she would avoid meeting him. Going out some back way at the office
and never being at home when he called at Montague Square. Then he would
write little notes to her and bribe the office-boy to deliver them,
begging her pardon most humbly--he played his cards, it may be noticed,
very seriously--imploring her to be friends again. And Joan would
forgive him and for a little they would be the best of companions.

But through it all, and though she shut her eyes more or less to the
trend of events, Joan's mind refused to be satisfied. She was restless
and at times unhappy; she had her hours of wondering where it would all
end, her spells of imagination when she saw Landon asking her to marry
him. When she thought about it at all it always ended like that, for she
could not blind her eyes to the fact of the man's love for her. Then she
would shun his society, and endeavour to build up a wall of reserve
between them, for it was her answer to his question that she could not
bring herself to face.

It was on one of these occasions that she made up her mind definitely to
break with him altogether. She wrote him a short note, saying that she
was going to be dreadfully busy at office and that as she had another
girl coming to stay with her--both statements equally untrue--she was
afraid it would be no use his calling to fetch her.

Landon accepted this attitude in silence, though one may believe it did
something to fan the flame of his passion, and for ten whole days he
left her entirely alone. Then he wrote.

Joan found the letter waiting for her on the hall table when she came
home one evening after a peculiarly dull and colourless day. It had been
delivered by hand and was addressed simply to "Pierrette, In the Attic."
Mrs. Carew must have been a little surprised at such a designation. Joan
took it upstairs to read, lingering over the opening of it with a
pleasurable thrill. The days had been very grey lacking his
companionship.

"Dear Pierrette," Landon had written, "is our romance finished, and why?
The only thing I have left to comfort me is a crushed red rose. You wore
it the first evening we ever met. Pierrette, you are forgetting that it
is summer. How can you wake each morning to blue skies and be
conventional? Summer is nearly over, and you do not know what