“Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, please,” he repeated in his patient voice. She turned hurriedly and disappeared into the stack room. Once out of sight she leaned against one of the cases and laughed silently and hysterically. “Oh,” she thought, “if he doesn’t stop it and go away I shall have to――to――I shall go crazy!” Presently, with a final gasp, she brushed the back of her hand across her eyes and went on down the concrete aisle in search of the volume. Out at the counter, the youth, left to himself, watched her while she was in sight and then leaned across to peer at the neatly arranged cards. She had left her handkerchief beside her work. With a timorous glance about him, he reached forward, picked it up and with a quick, vehement movement pressed it to his thin, unsmiling lips. He held it so a moment, his brown eyes staring widely through the rain-bleared window as though beholding visions. Then, as her steps came back toward him, he laid the handkerchief again in its place, straightened himself and waited. “Here it is, Mr. Winkley,” she said soberly. “Thank you. I am sorry to trouble you,” he answered gravely. “It is only what I am here for,” she answered coldly, taking up her pen once more. He remained for an instant looking at the bent head. Then, lifting the Anatomy of Melancholy from the counter, he turned and walked slowly and quite noiselessly back to his table. But as he went the ghost of a sigh trembled across the silence. The girl raised her head with a despairing glance toward the reading room, jabbed her pen viciously into the ink-stand and went on with her writing. The clock overhead ticked slowly and softly. The rain _swished_ past the windows. But presently a new sound made itself heard. Dim at first, it grew insistently until the girl heard it and again lifted her head and listened with a new light in her violet eyes. _Chug-chug, chug-chug-chug, chug-chug!_ [Illustration] Automobiles are not common in Ellington, especially after the summer colony departs, and the approach of this one brought a tinge of color to the soft cheeks and a flutter to the heart of the librarian. So often during the past three months she had listened with straining ears to the panting of an automobile on the road below! Usually the sound had died away again in the distance, and she had told herself, sighing, that she was very glad. But to-day the sounds increased every instant. The _chug-chug_ was slower now and more labored; the car had left the village road and was climbing the circling gravelled drive to the library. Every beat brought an answering beat from her heart.