r friend, and standing long enough to lift her rounded
arms above her head in a long stretch, she threw herself down on a low
couch. "_Oh_, I'm so sleepy! And I'm hungry too. I wish you would let me
have my coffee in here, Margaret; then I could talk to you and tell you
all about it. Don't you want to hear all about it?"

Margaret had risen to ring for Telano. "Of course," she said, as she
crossed the room.

"Let me see," began Garda, in a reviewing tone. "I went to sleep. Then I
woke up; and after a while I got frightened." She put her hands under
her head and closed her eyes. Presently she began to laugh. "That's all
there is to tell; yes, really. I got frightened--the barren was so dark
and so large behind me."

She said no more. As she had once remarked of herself, she was not a
narrator.

Margaret did not question her; she was clearing one of the tables for
the coffee.

After a while Garda, still with her eyes closed, spoke again:
"Margaret."

"Well?"

"You will have to tell me all the things I mustn't say and do."

"You will know them without my telling."

"Never in the world."

A few minutes more of silence, and then Garda's voice a second time:
"Margaret."

"Well?"

"Tell me you are pleased, or I won't go on with it."

"Oh, Garda, that's not the tone--"

"Yes, it is. The very one! Don't be afraid, we like each other, he likes
me in his way, and that will do; that is, it will do if you will tell me
how to please him."

"You must ask him that."

"Oh, _he'll_ tell; his principal occupation for a long time is going to
be the discovery of my faults." But as she looked up at Margaret,
re-awakened and laughing, it did not seem to the latter woman that he
would be able to find many.

In any case, he had not set about it yet. As he went through the hall
towards his room, accompanied by the Doctor, "I take it that it's hardly
necessary, Doctor," he said, "to formally ask your consent."

The Doctor waited until they had reached the room, and the door was
closed behind them. "I think it _is_ necessary, Mr. Winthrop," he
answered, gravely.

"Very well, then. I ask it," said the younger man. And his voice, as he
spoke, had a pleasant sound.

The Doctor had liked Evert Winthrop. There were two or three things
which he should have preferred to see changed; still, faults and all, he
had liked him. And he liked his present demand (though by no means the
manner of it); the Northerner was taking the pro