room."

"Sit down, and I'll go to your room with you when I'm through. I won't
be long, now."

She tried different gauzes, which she had lying on one of the chairs,
and crowned herself with triumph in the applauses of her two spectators,
rejoicing with a glee that Verrian found childlike and winning. "If
they're all like you, it will be the greatest success!"

"They'll all be like me, and more," he said, "I'm really very severe."

"Are you a severe person?" she asked, coming forward to him. "Ought
people to be afraid of you?"

"Yes, people with bad consciences. I'm rattier afraid of myself for that
reason."

"Have you got a bad conscience?" she asked, letting her eyes rest on
his.

"Yes. I can't make my conduct square with my ideal of conduct."

"I know what that is!" she sighed. "Do you expect to be punished for
it?"

"I expect to be got even with."

"Yes, one is. I've noticed that myself. But I didn't suppose
that actors--Oh, I forgot! I beg your pardon again, Mr. Verrian.
Oh--Goodnight!" She faced him evanescently in going out, with the woman
after her, but, whether she did so more in fear or more in defiance, she
left him standing motionless in his doubt, and she did nothing to solve
his doubt when she came quickly back alone, before he was aware of
having moved, to say, "Mr. Verrian, I want to--I have to--tell you
that--I didn't think you were the actor." Then she was finally gone,
and Verrian had nothing for it but to go up to his room with the book he
found he had in his hand and must have had there all the time.

If he had read it, the book would not have eased him off to sleep, but
he did not even try, to read it. He had no wish to sleep. The waking
dream in which he lost himself was more interesting than any vision
of slumber could have been, and he had no desire to end it. In that he
could still be talking with the girl whose mystery appealed to him so
pleasingly. It was none the less pleasing because, at what might
be called her first blushes, she did not strike him as altogether
ingenuous, but only able to discipline herself into a final sincerity
from a consciousness which had been taught wisdom by experience.

She was still a scarcely recovered invalid, and it was pathetic that
she should be commencing the struggle of life with strength so little
proportioned to the demand upon it; and the calling she had taken up was
of a fantasticality in some aspects which was equally pathetic. But
all