hour straight ahead, sending the next pupil
into the adjoining room--an unprecedented transgression of routine. He
showed her for the first time what a teacher he could be, when he
wished. There was an astonishing difference between her first singing
of the song and her sixth and last--for they went through it carefully
five times. She thanked him and then put out her hand, saying:

"This is a long good-by."

"To-morrow," replied he, ignoring her hand.

"No. My money is all gone. Besides, I have no time for amateur
trifling."

"Your lessons are paid for until the end of the month. This is only
the nineteenth."

"Then you are so much in." Again she put out her hand.

He took it. "You owe me an explanation."

She smiled mockingly. "As a friend of mine says, don't ask questions
to which you already know the answer."

And she departed, the smile still on her charming face, but the new
seriousness beneath it. As she had anticipated, she found Stanley
Baird waiting for her in the drawing-room of the apartment. Being by
habit much interested in his own emotions and not at all in the
emotions of others, he saw only the healthful radiance the sharp
October air had put into her cheeks and eyes. Certainly, to look at
Mildred Gower was to get no impression of lack of health and strength.
Her glance wavered a little at sight of him, then the expression of
firmness came back.

"You look like that picture you gave me a long time ago," said he. "Do
you remember it?"

She did not.

"It has a--different expression," he went on. "I don't think I'd have
noticed it but for Keith. I happened to show it to him one day, and he
stared at it in that way he has--you know?"

"Yes, I know," said Mildred. She was seeing those uncanny, brilliant,
penetrating eyes, in such startling contrast to the calm, lifeless
coloring and classic chiseling of features.

"And after a while he said, 'So, THAT'S Miss Stevens!' And I asked him
what he meant, and he took one of your later photos and put the two
side by side. To my notion the later was a lot the more attractive, for
the face was rounder and softer and didn't have a certain kind
of--well, hardness, as if you had a will and could ride rough shod. Not
that you look so frightfully unattractive."

"I remember the picture," interrupted Mildred. "It was taken when I
was twenty--just after an illness."

"The face WAS thin," said Stanley. "Keith called it a 'give away.'"