They walked slowly through the silent streets to her home, and in the darkness of the little round room he held her close in his arms and kissed her. "Has it been a happy day?" he whispered, his cheek pressed to hers. He felt the quick pressure of her hand upon his arm. "So happy," she murmured. After the door closed behind him she stood as she had that first night, and in the darkness about her she seemed to see the sweet face of a young girl--the girl of the picture.... She brushed the back of her hand across her smooth forehead and sighed.... In another week he was gone. He came back to her after many weeks and although she did not ask, he told her he had kept his promise. IV During the winter that followed, Houston's constant attention to Florence was generally accepted at its face-value. That they were engaged few of their intimates doubted; and among the faculty members of their acquaintance there were many smiles and sidewise glances. At a Forty Club dance one night Mrs. Longpré, a _chaperon_, said to Mrs. Clifford, another, lowering her lorgnette through which, for some moments she had stared, rather impertinently, as was her custom, at Jack and Florence, "I find that couple quite interesting." "Why, pray?" Mrs. Clifford asked, roused suddenly from the doze into which she had lapsed, due to _ennui_ that she made no effort to conceal. "That Mr. Houston seems a very nice young man," observed the worthy dame, patronizingly, and as though speaking to herself, "but what he can see in that girl is beyond me." Mrs. Clifford squinted. She refused to add to her generally aged and wrinkled appearance by wearing spectacles. "Isn't she a proper person?" she asked. Mrs. Clifford had a proper daughter--a very proper daughter--who at that precise moment was sitting prim and solitary on the lowest step of the gallery stairs. "Well," Mrs. Longpré observed, significantly, "there have been stories. Of course one is quite prepared to hear stories and whether they are true or not one never knows," she added, defensively. "But the girl's mother allows her to have her own way more than I should, if she were my daughter. She is old enough to be his aunt, besides, and always has half-a-dozen young men dancing attendance upon her." "I suppose it's just another college engagement that will end when he graduates," Mrs. Clifford ventured. "Is the girl in college at all?" she inquired with a smothered yawn. Mrs. Longpré smiled. "Hardly," she replied, drily. "If she had continued--for she started I am told--she would have graduated quite seven years ago." There was a tart venom in the last speech.