somebody's late night, and that somebody--it would be Anna Black's turn,
wouldn't it?--was struggling with John Zanowskis and Sadie Rabinowitzes
by the lapful, just as she had. And yet--and yet they had really cared
for her, those dirty, dear little foreigners of hers. But she'd had to
work for their liking.... Perhaps--perhaps she could make Allan
Harrington like her as much as the children did. He had been so kind
to-night about the move and all, and so much brighter, her handsome
Allan in his gray, every-day-looking man-clothes! If she could stay
brave enough and kind enough and bright enough ... her eyelids
drooped.... Wallis was standing respectfully over her.

"Mrs. Harrington," he was saying, with a really masterly ignoring of her
attitude on the rug, "Mr. Harrington says you haven't bid him good-night
yet."

An amazing message! Had she been in the habit of it, that he demanded it
like a small boy? But she sprang up and followed Wallis into Allan's
room. He was lying back in his white silk sleeping things among the
white bed-draperies, looking as he always had before. Only, he seemed
too alive and awake still for his old role of Crusader-on-a-tomb.

"Phyllis," he began eagerly, as she sat down beside him, "what made you
so frightened when I first came? Wallis hadn't worried you, had he?"

"Oh, no; it wasn't that at all," said Phyllis. "And thank you for being
so generous about it all."

"I wasn't generous," said her husband. "I behaved like everything to old
Wallis about it. Well, what was it, then?"

"I--I--only--you looked so different in--_clothes_," pleaded Phyllis,
"like any man my age or older--as if you might get up and go to
business, or play tennis, or anything, and--and I was _afraid_ of you!
That's all, truly!"

She was sitting on the bed's edge, her eyes down, her hands quivering in
her lap, the picture of a school-girl who isn't quite sure whether she's
been good or not.

"Why, that sounds truthful!" said Allan, and laughed. It was the first
time she had heard him, and she gave a start. Such a clear, cheerful,
_young_ laugh! Maybe he would laugh more, by and by, if she worked hard
to make him.

"Good-night, Allan," she said.

"Aren't you going to kiss me good-night?" demanded this new Allan,
precisely as if she had been doing it ever since she met him. Evidently
that kiss three hours ago had created a precedent. Phyllis colored to
her ears. She seemed to herself to be always coloring now.