bly mean?" she asked coldly.

He had leaned his arms upon the table, and now he smiled up at her like a
mischievous, cheeky school-boy. Even the most prejudiced person could but
acknowledge that Hayden had a most delightful smile.

"Mystery," he replied.

Her eyelashes lay on her cheek, long, black eyelashes on a cheek of
cream, with the faintest, the very faintest stain of carnation. She was
drawing designs on the tablecloth with her fork. She started slightly,
but if she felt any perturbation of spirit, she gave no sign further of
it, and yet Hayden knew intuitively that he had said just the thing he
should have been most careful to avoid.

"Ah, yes," she said at last slowly. "I dare say it does look like that. I
did not think of it in that way. I'm afraid I was thinking only of
expediency."

"And expediency to you apparently spells mystery to me," he said.

She made an impatient gesture. It struck him now that she was really
annoyed. "I can not help it if you see it that way." She strove to make
her voice icy.

"Wouldn't any one?" he persisted.

"Perhaps." She appeared to waver.

"You must admit," he continued, perversely pursuing the subject, "that
you are rather mysterious yourself. Why, you appeared so suddenly and
noiselessly beside me at the opera the other night--"

"My mother was to meet me there," she interrupted him, "but she
disappointed me."

"And then as suddenly and noiselessly you disappeared, that truly, if I
had not found the buckle of your shoe, I should never afterward have been
successful in assuring myself that you had really been there."

She looked at him now with a sparkle of amusement in her eyes, and he
experienced a quick sense of delight that violet eyes could be merry.

"Perhaps I was not really there at all," she laughed. It was evident that
she had thrown aside the distrust and distress of a few moments before.
"Listen"--leaning forward and speaking with more animation and assurance
than she had yet shown--"I will construct a romance for you, a romance of
mystery, since you seem determined to have mystery. Can you not fancy a
woman, young, eager, interested in all sorts of things, and shut off from
them all, living somewhere in the depths of the woods and consumed with
longing for the intense and changing life of the city, whose varied
phases only seem the more vivid and interesting when heightened by
distance; and she dreams of this--this lonely girl--until her longing
b