w what a Signary resembled or where Karia might be.

Miss Erroll's elbow was on her knee, her chin resting within her open
palm.

"Do you know about my parents?" she asked. "They were lost in the
_Argolis_ off Cyprus. You have heard. I think they meant that I should
go to college--as well as Gerald; I don't know. Perhaps after all it is
better for me to do what other young girls do. Besides, I enjoy it; and
my mother did, too, when she was my age, they say. She was very much
gayer than I am; my mother was a beauty and a brilliant woman. . . . But
there were other qualities. I--have her letters to father when Gerald
and I were very little; and her letters to us from London. . . . I have
missed her more, this winter, it seems to me, than even in that dreadful
time--"

She sat silent, chin in hand, delicate fingers restlessly worrying her
red lips; then, in quick impulse:

"You will not mistake me, Captain Selwyn! Nina and Austin have been
perfectly sweet to me and to Gerald."

"I am not mistaking a word you utter," he said.

"No, of course not. . . . Only there are times . . . moments . . ."

Her voice died; her clear eyes looked out into space while the silent
seconds lengthened into minutes. One slender finger had slipped between
her lips and teeth; the burnished strand of hair which Nina dreaded lay
neglected against her cheek.

"I should like to know," she began, as though to herself, "something
about everything. That being out of the question, I should like to know
everything about something. That also being out of the question, for
third choice I should like to know something about something. I am not
too ambitious, am I?"

Selwyn did not offer to answer.

"_Am_ I?" she repeated, looking directly at him.

"I thought you were asking yourself."

"But you need not reply; there is no sense in my question."

She stood up, indifferent, absent-eyed, half turning toward the window;
and, raising her hand, she carelessly brought the rebel strand of hair
under discipline.

"You _said_ you were going to look up Gerald," she observed.

"I am; now. What are you going to do?"

"I? Oh, dress, I suppose. Nina ought to be back now, and she expects me
to go out with her."

She nodded a smiling termination of their duet, and moved toward the
door. Then, on impulse, she turned, a question on her lips--left
unuttered through instinct. It had to do with the identity of the pretty
woman who had so directly saluted him