or little girl!" he said. "In your place I'd have married the
devil himself--up against a life like that."

"Then--then you don't--mind?" asked Phyllis anxiously, as she had asked
before.

"No, indeed!" said Allan, with a little unnecessary firmness. "I _told_
you that, didn't I? I like it."

"So you did tell me," she said penitently.

"But supposing De Guenther hadn't picked out some one like you----"

"That's just what I've often thought myself," said Phyllis naively. "She
might have been much worse than I.... Oh, but I was frightened when I
saw you first! I didn't know what you'd be like. And then, when I looked
at you----"

"Well, when you looked at me?" demanded Allan.

But Phyllis refused to go on.

"But that's not all," said Allan. "What about--men?"

"What men?" asked Phyllis innocently.

"Why, men you were interested in, of course," he answered.

"There weren't any," said Phyllis. "I hadn't any place to meet them, or
anywhere to entertain them if I had met them. Oh, yes, there was one--an
old bookkeeper at the boarding-house. All the boarders there were old.
That was why the people at home had chosen it. They thought it would be
safe. It was all of that!"

"Well, the bookkeeper?" demanded Allan. "You're straying off from your
narrative. The bookkeeper, Phyllis, my dear!"

"I'm telling you about him," protested Phyllis. "He was awfully cross
because I wouldn't marry him, but I didn't see any reason why I should.
I didn't like him especially, and I would probably have gone on with my
work afterwards. There didn't seem to me to be anything to it for any
one but him--for of course I'd have had his mending and all that to do
when I came home from the library, and I scarcely got time for my own.
But he lost his temper fearfully because I didn't want to. Then, of
course, men would try to flirt in the library, but the janitor always
made them go out when you asked him to. He loved doing it.... Why,
Allan, it must be seven o'clock! Shall I turn on more lights?"

"No.... Then you were quite as shut up in your noisy library as I was in
my dark rooms," said Allan musingly.

"I suppose I was," she said, "though I never thought of it before. You
mustn't think it was horrid. It was fun, lots of it. Only, there wasn't
any being a real girl in it."

"There isn't much in this, I should think," said Allan savagely,
"except looking after a big doll."

Phyllis's laugh tinkled out. "Oh, I _love_ playing with dol