at all. Altogether, with
many-times-mended gloves upon her hands, and shoes which to her seemed
disgraceful, though preserved with all the care of which she was
mistress, Georgiana felt somehow more than ordinarily shabby.

Doctor Craig asked her several questions. He spoke of the rug-making,
watching her closely as she answered. He asked how often she went to
walk and how far. He asked what she and her father were reading. He
would have asked other questions, but she interrupted him.

"It's not fair," she said. "Please tell me about the book. Does it get
on?"

"Do you care to know?"

"Very much. I'm wondering if your copyist makes those German references
any clearer for the printer than I did."

"Nobody has copied a word. I have not written a word. The book is at a
complete standstill. I see no hope for it until I can take another
vacation--under the name of E. C. Jefferson."

"And that you will never take," she said positively.

"I never shall--in the same way. There are reasons against it. The book
will have to be written as the others were--on trains, on shipboard, in
my own room late at night."

"Is it right to try to put two lifetimes into one?" she asked, and now
she lifted her eyes to his.

Before, she had managed to avoid a direct meeting by those many and
engaging little makeshifts girls have, of glancing at a man's shoulder,
his ear, his mouth--and off at the floor, the window--anywhere not to
let him see clearly what she may be afraid he will see. And Georgiana
was intensely afraid that if Dr. Jefferson Craig got one straight look
with those keen eyes of his he would recognize that her whole aching,
throbbing heart was betraying itself from between those lifted lashes.
But now, somehow, with her question she ventured to give him this one
look. The interview might end at any moment; she must have one straight
survey of his face, bent so near hers.

He gave it back, and until her glance dropped he did not speak. Then,
very low, but very clearly, he said deliberately:

"When may I come?"

The room whirled. The lights from the sconces danced together and
blurred. The floor lifted and sank away again. And Chester Crofton chose
this moment--as if he were not after all really of that highly
intelligent class which knows when to pursue its own conversations and
when to break into those of others--to call across the room:

"Oh, I beg pardon, Doctor Craig, but when did you say Jean might have
somethin