Till then it had not occurred to Verrian that he was not going to stay through the week, but now he said, “I don’t know but I may go Thursday. Shall you?” “I might as well stay on. I don’t find much doing in real estate at Christmas. Do you?” This was fishing, but it was better than openly taking him for that actor, and Verrian answered, unresentfully, “I don’t know. I’m not in that line exactly.” “Oh, I beg your pardon,” Bushwick said. “I thought I had seen your name with that of a West Side concern.” “No, I have a sort of outside connection with the publishing business.” “Oh,” Bushwick returned, politely, and it would have been reassuringly if Verrian had wished not to be known as an author. The secret in which he lived in that regard was apparently safe from that young, amiable, good-looking real-estate broker. He inferred, from the absence of any allusion to the superstition of the women as to his profession, that it had not spread to Bushwick at least, and this inclined him the more to like him. They sat up talking pleasantly together about impersonal affairs till Bushwick finished his cigar. Then he started for bed, saying, “Well, good-night. I hope Mrs. Westangle won’t have anything so active on the tapis for tomorrow.” “Try and sleep it off. Good-night.” XV. Verrian remained to finish his cigar, but at the end he was not yet sleepy, and he thought he would get a book from the library, if that part of the house were still lighted, and he looked out to see. Apparently it was as brilliantly illuminated as when the company had separated there for the night, and he pushed across the foyer hall that separated the billiard-room from the drawing-zoom and library. He entered the drawing-room, and in the depths of the library, relieved against the rows of books in their glass cases, he startled Miss Shirley from a pose which she seemed to be taking there alone. At the instant of their mutual recognition she gave a little muted shriek, and then gasped out, “I beg your pardon,” while he was saying, too, “I beg your pardon.” After a tacit exchange of forgiveness, he said, “I am afraid I startled you. I was just coming for a book to read myself asleep with. I--” “Not at all,” she returned. “I was just--” Then she did not say what, and he asked: “Making some studies?” “Yes,” she owned, with reluctant promptness. “I mustn’t ask what,” he suggested, and he made an effort to smile away what seemed a painful perturbation in her as he went forward to look at the book-shelves, from which, till then, she had not slipped aside. “I’m in your way,” she said, and he answered, “Not at all.” He added to the other sentence he had spoken, “If it’s going to be as good as what you gave us today--”