had risen at his approach.

"Aren't you afraid of taking cold?" She had not offered him her hand;
both hands were hidden in the folds of her voluminous wrap. He said the
simplest thing he could think of.

"No. I'm wearing a very warm fur-lined cloak. It's very long, too. I
couldn't stay indoors. The house seemed so--so dead."

"Is there nobody with you?"

"Colonel Ashley went back to town before dinner. Papa wasn't quite so
well. He's trying to sleep. Will you sit down on the step, or go in and
bring out a chair? But perhaps you'll find it chilly. If so, we'll go
in."

She half rose, but he checked her. "Not at all. I like it here. It's one
of our wonderful, old-fashioned Octobers, isn't it? Besides, I've got an
overcoat."

He threw the coat over his shoulders, seating himself on the floor, with
his feet on the steps below him and his back to one of the fluted
Corinthian pilasters. The shadow was so deep on this side of the
house--the side remote from the approaching moonrise--that they could
see each other but dimly. Of the two she was the more visible, not only
because she was in white, but because of the light coming through the
open sitting-room behind her from the hail in the middle of the house.
In this faint glimmer he could see the pose of her figure in the deep
wicker arm-chair and the set of her neat head with its heavy coil of
hair.

"I asked you to come," she said, simply, "because I feel so helpless."

"That's a very good reason," he responded, guardedly. "I'm glad you
thought of me, rather than of any one else."

He was pleased to note that even to his own ears his accent was polite,
but no more. At the same minute he found the useful formula he had been
in search of--"I mustn't let her know I'm in love with her."

"There's no one else for me to think of," she explained, in self-excuse.
"If there were, I shouldn't bother you."

"That's not so kind," he said, keeping to the tone of conventional
gallantry.

"I don't mean that I haven't plenty of friends. I know lots of
people--naturally; but I don't know them in a way to appeal to them like
this."

"Then so much the better for me."

"That's not a reason for my imposing on your kindness; and yet I'm
afraid I must go on doing it. I feel like a person in such desperate
straits for ready money that he's reckless of the rate of interest. Not
that it's a question of money now--exactly."

"It doesn't matter what it's a case of. I'm at your servi