ertinent to say that I could do
it better by myself?"

She looked at her watch and ignored his last question. "You can't do
two hours' work. It's twenty minutes past your time already."

Past his time, indeed! As if he hadn't been working past his time
every night since he came. She had grown mighty particular all of a
sudden!

"The presence of these engaging little Elzevirs is a terrible
temptation to a second-hand bookseller, still I believe you can trust
me with them alone."

From the expression of her face he gathered that this remark was even
more impertinent than the other. He had meant it to be.

"I really think," said the lady, "that you had better go."

"Just as you please; I shall only have to sit up two hours later
to-morrow night."

He walked to his place with his head thrown farther back and his chin
thrust farther forward than ever. He began to sort and arrange his
papers preparatory to his departure. It took him five minutes. At the
end of the five minutes he was aware that Lucia had risen and was
bidding him Good-night.

"You were quite right," she was saying. "I _am_ tired, and I had
better leave off. If you had rather stay and finish, please stay."

At those words Mr. Rickman was filled with a monstrous and amazing
courage. He made for the door, crossing without a tremor the whole
length of the library. He reached the door before Miss Harden, and
opened it. He returned her good-night with a hope that she would be
rested in the morning. And as he went back to his solitary labour he
smiled softly to himself, a smile of self-congratulation.

He had meant her to go--and she had gone.

Upstairs in her room overhead Lucia communed with her own face in the
glass.

"My private secretary?"

The face in the glass looked dubious.

"Of course I would rather have a gentleman for my private secretary.
Some people would say he isn't a gentleman." (She had said it herself
the other day.)

The face in the glass smiled dimly, between two parted veils of hair.

"What _is_ a gentleman?"

The face in the glass suggested that this was indeed a subtle and a
difficult question.

"It was not his business if I chose to tire myself. Would it have been
his business if he'd been a gentleman?"

The face in the glass offered no opinion.

"I think I like him best when he's impertinent. He is so _very_ funny,
poor dear, when he tries to be polite."

The face in the glass, framed by two white arms raising a