r she was more
reassured or troubled because he had not spoken a word. Yet the next
moment he looked around at her.

"We shan't meet every evening in such a way as this," he said, and left
the statement dangling unanswerable between them. It sounded
portentous--final. She wondered that in the middle of her fear it could
strike such a sharp note of regret in her. She knew she would regret not
meeting him again; and yet she shrank from the thought she could still
want to meet him. By one look her whole feeling of sympathy, of
reliance, of admiration, that had flowed out to him so naturally she had
scarcely been aware of it, had been troubled and mixed with fear. She
couldn't answer. She could only look at him with a reflection of her
trouble in her face.

"Are you surprised that I thought of that?" he inquired. "It's not so
odd as you seem to think that I should want to see you again. I don't
want to leave it to chance; do you?" He shot the question at her so
suddenly, with such a casual eye, and such dry gravity of mouth, that he
had her admission out of her before she realized the extent of its
meaning. And the way he took that admission for granted, and overlooked
her confusion, made her feel that for the sake of whatever he was after
he was intentionally ignoring what it did not suit his convenience to
see. She knew he must have seen; that every moment while she had changed
and fluttered his eye had never left her.

"Then when are you at home?" he asked her; and by his tone, he conveyed
the impression that he was only making courteous response to some
invitation she had offered him; though, when she thought, she had not
offered it, he had got it out of her. He had got it by sheer
impertinence. But none the less he had it. She couldn't escape him
there.

She answered somewhat stiffly: "Fridays, second and fourth."

He looked at her with a humorous twist of mouth. "What? So seldom?"

She was impotent if he wouldn't be snubbed; but at the worst she
wouldn't be cornered. "Oh, dear, no--but people who come at other times
take a chance."

"Does that mean that I may take mine to-morrow?"

He was pressing her too hard. Why was he so anxious to see her, as he
had not been the first night or yesterday, or even ten minutes ago? She,
who, ten minutes ago, would have been glad, now was doing her best to
put him off. She was silent a moment, considering the conventions, and
then, like him, she abandoned them. Without a wo