“I needn’t ask if _you_ are happy,” said I, presently, with a dismal failure at looking cheerful. “I can’t stay but a moment,” I added, and if I had obeyed my feelings, I’d have risen up and taken myself and my pain away from surroundings as hateful to me as a summer sunrise in a death chamber. “Oh!” she exclaimed, in some confusion. “Then excuse me.” And she hastened from the room. I thought she had gone to order, or perhaps to bring, the tea. The long minutes dragged away until ten had passed. Hearing a rustling in the hall, I rose, intending to take leave the instant she appeared. The rustling stopped just outside. I waited a few seconds, cried, “Well, I’m off. Next time I want to be alone, I’ll know where to come,” and advanced to the door. It was not Alva hesitating there; it was Anita. “I beg your pardon,” said I, coldly. If there had been room to pass I should have gone. What devil possessed me? Certainly in all our relations I had found her direct and frank; if anything, too frank. Doubtless it was the influence of my associations downtown, where for so many months I had been dealing with the “short-card” crowd of high finance, who would not play the game straight even where that was the easy way to win. My long, steady stretch in that stealthy and sinuous company had put me in the state of mind in which it is impossible to credit any human being with a motive that is decent or an action that is not a dead-fall. Thus the obvious change in her made no impression on me. Her haughtiness, her coldness, were gone, and with them had gone all that had been least like her natural self, most like the repellent conventional pattern to which her mother and her associates had molded her. But I was saying to myself: “A trap! Langdon has gone back to his wife. She turns to me.” And I loved her and hated her. “Never,” thought I, “has she shown so poor an opinion of me as now.” “My uncle told me day before yesterday that it was not he, but you,” she said, lifting her eyes to mine. It is inconceivable to me now that I could have misread their honest story; yet I did. “I had no idea your uncle’s notion of honor was also eccentric,” said I, with a satirical smile that made the blood rush to her face. “That is unjust to him,” she replied, earnestly. “He says he made you no promise of secrecy. And he confessed to me only because he wished to convince me that he had good reason for his high opinion of you.” “Really!” said I, ironically. “And no doubt he found you open wide to conviction--_now_.” This a subtlety to let her know that I understood why she was seeking me. “No,” she answered, lowering her eyes. “I knew--better than he.” For an instant this, spoken in a voice I had long given up hope of ever hearing from her, staggered my cynical conviction. Then I said, mockingly: “Doubtless your opinion of me has been improving steadily ever since you heard that Mrs. Langdon has recovered her husband.”