In the sitting-room Mary was similarly occupied. Though she was going back to the Flowers' so soon, she took off her hat. Having done so, she stood before the mantel-mirror, fluffing up her hair a little, where the hat had pressed it down. It is the immemorial fashion of women: a characteristic position, and so an engaging one. Delicately the upraised arms defined the lines of a graceful figure. But when Mary saw in the mirror that Charles Garrott had come into the room, and had stopped short just over the threshold, looking at her, she knew only that the moment had come when she must make acknowledgments due for good aid and comfort received. And in her, the strong, nervousness spread now like a fear. So she plunged hastily, the moment their eyes met: "I know, of course, there isn't time to tell me about it now. But--I don't seem to get any picture of your--your man at all.... What sort of man is he, personally?" The author, starting a little, moved forward in the dusky room. "Oh, let's not speak of him," he said, with visible effort. "He's only a writer. That's polite for a poor stick." "No--don't! Tell me--in the action of the story--what does he do?" "Not a thing--really. Just sits around and thinks." Strength came into her low voice: "Why--_why_ do you always belittle him so?" Continuing to look at her, he said, remotely surprised: "Belittle him? But I don't." The school-teacher's fingers closed over the mantel, and the tips of her nails whitened. "Then I don't understand at all," she said, steadily. "I've been thinking that it was he who almost murdered the villain, and gave one of the Spinsters her old place back...." Charles Garrott stood like a man turned to stone, fascinated gaze upon the eyes in the mirror: girlish eyes, doubtless, but quite unwavering now. And then, in an instant, his face was scarlet from neck to brow. His embarrassment was frightful to see: that of a soul too suddenly stripped bare. "Oh!... So you've been looking through me--all along. I see ... the Judge didn't confine himself to ... Well, his knowing--was purely an accident. He had, of course, no--" "And why must my knowing be an accident, too?" "I--it was simply something you had nothing whatever to do with. And there was an understanding--the--the matter was entirely private. You'll please forget the Judge's--small-talk, and--" "Not if I live to be a thousand! I'll forget everything--I'll forget my name!--but that!--no, you ask too much of my feelings." That, indeed, checked the young man's horrible self-consciousness. He saw, with unsteadying bewilderment, that this was no light conversation of hers, that Mary Wing was more deeply moved than he had ever seen her. And suddenly he was aware, by some swift flicker of his intuition, that it was to say this to him, and nothing else, that she had come home, made a holiday, to-day....