ows you are pleased to see her....
It is either on the ottoman behind the screen, or in the top left-hand
drawer of the mahogany chest, between the window and the fireplace.
Ah, how much we have come through, during the last twenty-four hours!
The scissors, dear Love, are hanging by black tape from a nail in the
store-room. You require a large and _common_ pair for cutting brown
paper. How truly wonderful are the ways of Providence, dear
Christobel! The paste is in the little cupboard under the stairs."

When Miss Charteris had finished covering the book, having bent upon it
all the _mind_ and _method_ it required, she forestalled the setting of
another task, by saying firmly: "I want an important talk now, please.
Ann, are you sure you told your brother that I had cared for him for
years?"

"Darling, dear Kenrick was so _diffident_; so unable to realize his own
powers of _attraction_; so----"

"Do you think it was fair toward a woman, even if it were true, to tell
a man who had never asked her love, that that love has long been his?"

"Sweet child, how crudely you put it! I merely _hinted, whispered_;
gave the most _delicate_ indications of what I knew to be your feeling.
For you _do_ love my brother; do you not, dear Christobel?"

"I think," said Miss Charteris, slowly, weighing each word; "I think I
love the Professor as a woman loves a book."

There was a moment of tense silence in Miss Ann's drawing-room.
Christobel Charteris looked straight before her, a stern light upon her
face, as of one confronted on the path of duty by the clear shining of
the mirror of self-revelation.

Into Miss Ann's pale blue eyes shot a gleam of nervous anxiety.

Sweetie-weet chirped, interrogatively.

Then Miss Ann, recovering, clasped her hands. "Ah, what a beautiful
definition!" she said. "What _could_ be more pure, more perfect?"

Miss Charteris knew a love of a very different kind, which was
absolutely pure, and altogether perfect. But that was the love she had
put from her.

"A woman could hardly marry a book," she said.

Miss Ann gave a little deprecatory shriek. "Darling child!" she cried.
"_No_ simile, however beautiful, should be pressed too far! Your
exquisite description of your love for dear Kenrick merely assures us
that your union with him will prove one of complete contentment to the
mind. And the _mind_--that sensitive instrument, attuned to all the
immensities of the intellectual spheres--the _mi