sure that he had heard what had been said of her. But what was there that
Rosedale did not hear?

"Wasn't it a soft berth?" he enquired, with an attempt at lightness.

"Too soft--one might have sunk in too deep." Lily rested one arm on the
edge of the table, and sat looking at him more intently than she had ever
looked before. An uncontrollable impulse was urging her to put her case
to this man, from whose curiosity she had always so fiercely defended
herself.

"You know Mrs. Hatch, I think? Well, perhaps you can understand that she
might make things too easy for one."

Rosedale looked faintly puzzled, and she remembered that allusiveness was
lost on him.

"It was no place for you, anyhow," he agreed, so suffused and immersed in
the light of her full gaze that he found himself being drawn into strange
depths of intimacy. He who had had to subsist on mere fugitive glances,
looks winged in flight and swiftly lost under covert, now found her eyes
settling on him with a brooding intensity that fairly dazzled him.

"I left," Lily continued, "lest people should say I was helping Mrs.
Hatch to marry Freddy Van Osburgh--who is not in the least too good for
her--and as they still continue to say it, I see that I might as well
have stayed where I was."

"Oh, Freddy----" Rosedale brushed aside the topic with an air of its
unimportance which gave a sense of the immense perspective he had
acquired. "Freddy don't count--but I knew YOU weren't mixed up in that.
It ain't your style."

Lily coloured slightly: she could not conceal from herself that the words
gave her pleasure. She would have liked to sit there, drinking more tea,
and continuing to talk of herself to Rosedale. But the old habit of
observing the conventions reminded her that it was time to bring their
colloquy to an end, and she made a faint motion to push back her chair.

Rosedale stopped her with a protesting gesture. "Wait a minute--don't go
yet; sit quiet and rest a little longer. You look thoroughly played out.
And you haven't told me----" He broke off, conscious of going farther
than he had meant. She saw the struggle and understood it; understood
also the nature of the spell to which he yielded as, with his eyes on her
face, he began again abruptly: "What on earth did you mean by saying just
now that you were learning to be a milliner?"

"Just what I said. I am an apprentice at Regina's."

"Good Lord--YOU? But what for? I knew your aunt had turned you