To that the young man, standing on the sidewalk before his own door, replied with a courteous generalization. Wariness was reflexive with him, so to say. But then, as he looked at the soft young face, he seemed to become suddenly conscious of the essential caddishness of his past behavior, and of yet another feeling, too, less coolly judicial. Had not the Kiss, in fact, set this girl somehow apart from others, remaining as a subtle bond after all? Pressing her slender hand, he added: "Meanwhile, I've enjoyed this one very much! You've been--extremely good to me." * * * * * "Willcox's" had given Mary the Freewoman a fine spread. The write-up occupied all of one of its large pages, with three paragraphs "Continued on Page 49," among the Men's Ready to Wear Clothing. Out of the middle of the text, the best of the portraits supplied by Fanny Warder gazed back steadily at the two relatives in the Studio. The famous Mary was seated in a flowered armchair, and seemed just to have looked round over her shoulder. Her delicate, quite girlish, face wore her characteristic look of faint, grave interrogation; her eyes were intent and fine. "Gad, you know!" said Judge Blenso, who had seen Charles's name in print for the first time with an exclamation of pride and pleasure. "Why, it's stunnin', my dear fellow! Simply stunnin'!" But the mind's eye of Charles, looking down at the life-like presentment, was seeing that confident gaze averted; the ear of his fancy was hearing the low sounds of womanly emotion in this quarter at last. That, of course, was just after he had gently said to her--why, it might be next week!--"Do you remember telling me one day that I couldn't help you at all? Why, Miss Mary, did you really suppose I'd let you go on as a Grammar School teacher till _May_!...." "Bring 'em out as a holiday book--that's what I say! Why, good gad, Charles!--we only got twenty dollars for that piece there!" The young man laughed absently, and removed his overcoat. A glance at Big Bill showed that it was just four o'clock. He had examined the mail, heard the secretary's unfavorable reports. The Studio, after nearly three weeks' holiday, suggested the necessity of work undoubtedly; he was as far from settling upon his Line as ever. But it seemed that he didn't feel like plotting scenarios to-day. The "Post," the "State," the "Chronicle"--why shouldn't he go down there now, get the thing started at once?... "Oh, Judge, by the way! Do you know whether Miss McGee ever brought back that book I lent her?--fat red book, called 'Marna'?" "'Marna,' 'Marna'? Never heard of it. Yes, that's so, she did! Here it is!" said the Judge, and forthwith plucked Miss Angela's long-kept loan from the bookcase close by. "That's it! Let's lay it here on the mantel. Then maybe I'll remember--"