"I did say something of the sort last week, I believe--though no day was really settled on. But it was very nice of you," she went on naturally enough, but with too evident a wish to shift the conversation, "to take so much trouble about it to-day. I do appreciate all your interest in it--and I do believe it's going to turn out right, too. Donald certainly left me with that feeling, this afternoon. So don't let's bother about it any more now," said Mary. "I'd much rather hear--some more about your writing. I hope you've gotten the book well started now?" But Charles, unique among the writers of the world, did not want to talk about himself to-day. No, he had found the topic for him now. "No!--I haven't, I'm sorry to say. Your arrangements are all made, aren't they? Judge Blenso tells me you're going to live with Sophy Stein, who used to run the Pure Food laboratories here?" Again her brief look seemed to thrust upon him like a hand, and again her reply glanced off:-- "Yes--I was planning to live with her. You knew her, didn't you, when--" "I was going to say--if everything is arranged, perhaps you wouldn't need to start so early.... Of course, the idea of your friends here would be that you should wait till the last day." As she neither approved nor rejected this amiable suggestion, Charles said: "How does that idea appeal to you?" To his surprise, instead of answering his question, Mary rose abruptly and went over to her desk. He then assumed that she wished to show him some letter bearing on her arrangements for her new life. But it seemed that her movement had no such object. She merely stood there a moment, fingering her papers in an irresolute sort of way; and then, without a word, she moved a little farther, and stood, looking out of the window. He said, at once with bewilderment and with increasing constraint: "Or possibly you don't wish me to know when you are going?" Then Mary Wing turned in the dying light, and said, not dramatically at all, but in her quietest everyday voice:-- "No, I don't mind your knowing. I'm not going." And still the authority on women did not understand. "Not going--when?" "I've decided not to accept the appointment." And, sitting down, suddenly and purposelessly at her desk, the young woman of the Career added in a rather let-down voice: "I haven't told anybody at all yet. I just decided--last night." Then came silence into the twilight sitting-room, surely a silence like none here before it. In the Wings' best chair, the caller sat still as a marble man, while the little noises from the street grew loud and louder. And then, quite abruptly and mechanically, he began to rise, exactly as if an unseen spirit were lifting him bodily by the hair. And he could feel all the blood drawing out of his face. "Not going to accept the appointment," he echoed suddenly, in a queer voice.