rently it was as brilliantly illuminated as when the company had
separated there for the night, and he pushed across the foyer hall
that separated the billiard-room from the drawing-zoom and library. He
entered the drawing-room, and in the depths of the library, relieved
against the rows of books in their glass cases, he startled Miss Shirley
from a pose which she seemed to be taking there alone.

At the instant of their mutual recognition she gave a little muted
shriek, and then gasped out, "I beg your pardon," while he was saying,
too, "I beg your pardon."

After a tacit exchange of forgiveness, he said, "I am afraid I startled
you. I was just coming for a book to read myself asleep with. I--"

"Not at all," she returned. "I was just--" Then she did not say what,
and he asked:

"Making some studies?"

"Yes," she owned, with reluctant promptness.

"I mustn't ask what," he suggested, and he made an effort to smile away
what seemed a painful perturbation in her as he went forward to look at
the book-shelves, from which, till then, she had not slipped aside.

"I'm in your way," she said, and he answered, "Not at all." He added to
the other sentence he had spoken, "If it's going to be as good as what
you gave us today--"

"You are very kind." She hesitated, and then she said, abruptly: "What
I did to-day owed everything to you, Mr. Verrian," and while he desisted
from searching the book-shelves, she stood looking anxiously at him,
with the pulse in her neck visibly throbbing. Her agitation was really
painful, but Verrian did not attribute it to her finding herself there
alone with him at midnight; for though the other guests had all gone to
bed, the house was awake in some of the servants, and an elderly woman
came in presently bringing a breadth of silvery gauze, which she held
up, asking if it was that.

"Not exactly, but it will do nicely, Mrs. Stager. Would you mind getting
me the very pale-blue piece that electric blue?"

"I'm looking for something good and dull," Verrian said, when the woman
was gone.

"Travels are good, or narratives, for sleeping on," she said, with a
breathless effort for calm. "I found," she panted, "in my own insomnia,
that merely the broken-up look of a page of dialogue in a novel racked
my nerves so that I couldn't sleep. But narratives were beautifully
soothing."

"Thank you," he responded; "that's a good idea." And stooping, with his
hands on his knees, he ranged back and fort