sdays were dedicated to Miss
Andrews."

"You are a clever woman, Miss Macroyd. I should never have thought of so
much to say on such an uninteresting subject. And Miss Shirley showed no
curiosity?"

"Ah, she is a clever woman, too. She showed the prettiest kind of
curiosity--so perfectly managed. She has a studio--I don't know just how
she puts it to use--with a painter girl in one of those studio apartment
houses on the West Side: The Veronese, I believe. You must go and see
her; I'll let you have next Tuesday off; Tuesday's her day, too."

"You are generosity itself, Miss Macroyd."

"Yes, there's nothing mean about me," she returned, in slang rather
older than she ordinarily used. "If you're not here next Tuesday I shall
know where you are."

"Then I must take a good many Tuesdays off, unless I want to give myself
away."

"Oh, don't do that, Mr. Verrian! Please! Or else I can't let you have
any Tuesday off."

XXI.

Upon the whole, Verrian thought he would go to see Miss Shirley the next
Tuesday, but he did not say so to Miss Macroyd. Now that he knew where
the girl was, all the peculiar interest she had inspired in him renewed
itself. It was so vivid that he could not pay his usual Thursday call at
Miss Andrews's, and it filled his mind to the exclusion of the new story
he had begun to write. He loafed his mornings away at his club, and
he lunched there, leaving his mother to lunch alone, and was dreamily
preoccupied in the evenings which he spent at home, sitting at his desk,
with the paper before him, unable to coax the thoughts from his brain to
its alluring blank, but restive under any attempts of hers to talk with
him.

In his desperation he would have gone to the theatre, but the fact that
the ass who rightfully called himself Verrian was playing at one of them
blocked his way, through his indignation, to all of them. By Saturday
afternoon the tedious time had to be done something with, and he decided
to go and see what the ass was like.

He went early, and found himself in the end seat of a long row of many
rows of women, who were prolonging the time of keeping their hats on
till custom obliged them to take them off. He gave so much notice to the
woman next him as to see that she was deeply veiled as well as widely
hatted, and then he lapsed into a dreary muse, which was broken by the
first strains of the overture. Then he diverted himself by looking round
at all those ranks of women lifting