"You don't know Maginnis," he answered gloomily. "Nobody in the world ever stays alone long when Maginnis can possibly get to him." He heard something that he thought might be a faint laugh. And immediately ten years more came off the lady's age, and she stood at twenty-two. The young man began to consider with less distaste his obvious duty of escorting her home. In the momentary silence, wood somewhere near them once more creaked loudly and scarily. "Oh!" came her voice out of the blackness. "Would you mind striking a match and seeing if there isn't a lamp or something we could light?" "But I haven't a match--that's just it! If I _had_--! Why I assure you I've been wishing for nothing so much as a light ever since you--ever since I came in." "If I were a man--" she began, vexedly, but suddenly checked herself. "Are you quite sure you haven't a single _one_?" "I'll gladly look again in all my twenty-seven pockets. I've been doing it ever since I arrived, and I've gotten rather to like it. But I'm awfully afraid it's a wild goose chase." Crack! Crack! went the mysteriously stirring woodwork, for all the world like a living thing; and the lady again said "Oh!" And after that she said: "You are not--in this room, are you?" "I'm sitting quietly on the steps digging around for matches," he said. "Would you prefer to have me come in there?" "Would you mind--? Not that I'm in the least frightened, but--" "It will give me great pleasure to come--faithfully searching my pockets as I grope forward. Thus," he said, laughing, "I must grope only with my head and feet, which is a slightly dangerous thing to do. Ouch! Where are you, please?" "Here." "'Here' is not very definite, you know. I have nothing to steer by but my ear. Would you mind talking a good deal for a while?" "It is not often," she said, with further signs of a thawing in her manner, "that a woman gets an invitation like that." "Opportunity knocks at your door, golden, novel, and unique." "The luck of it is that I can't think of anything to say. Would you care to have me hum something?" Off came the lady's glasses, never to be donned again in fancy or in life; and Varney was ready to admit that there might be ladies in Hunston who were worse-looking than she by far. In the Stygian blackness he collided with a chair and paused, leaning upon the back of it. "I'd like extremely to have you hum. From your voice, I--I'm sure that you do it div--awfully well. But since you seem to leave it to me, I'd honestly rather have you do something else." "Yes?" Larry laughed. "It's a game. A--an evening pastime--a sort of novel guessing contest. Played by strangers in the dark. You see--I must tell you that ever since you first spoke, my mind has been giving me little thumbnail sketches--each one different from the last--of what you look like." She said nothing to this; so he laughed again.