How strange that the conversation should have taken that turn at dinner! Could Letitia have heard anything? Impossible! Even if she had, she was too simple-minded and direct to be so manoeuvering. This was the seventh time he had been to see Viola Reed--the seventh time in less than three months. What did he go for? He laughed a little to himself at the question, and throwing his head back, blew a film of cigarette smoke into the night. What did he go for? To pass the evenings, that otherwise would have been idly passed in his own rooms, or dully passed in society, or drearily passed in the pursuit of amusements he had long wearied of, in the society of a girl who pleased his critical taste, beguiled him of his boredom, and piqued his interest and curiosity. Yes, that was the secret of her attraction for him. She was not like any one he had ever known before. She piqued his curiosity. A picture of her rose before his mental vision, and with a shamefaced laugh at his own sentiment, he threw his cigarette away. Letitia had said she was pretty. Undoubtedly she was, but she was something more than pretty. Refined, delicate, poetic--there was no word that described it. If Letitia went about talking of her, other people would want to see her. He resented the idea violently, and felt his anger rising at the thought of the coarse curiosity and comment that would suddenly surround her. Some one ought to stop Letitia from talking that way. "For," thought John Gault, as he turned a corner and came within view of Colonel Reed's abode, "I am the prince who has found the Sleeping Beauty." The house, like many in that quarter of the city, was detached, and had once been a dwelling with pretensions to gentility. Time and weather had worked their will of it, and even under the kindly veil of night its haggard dilapidation was visible. It sat back a few feet from the street in a square of garden, where a tall dracæna shook its rustling foliage to every breeze. There was a large flowering jasmine-tree by the gate, that spread a sweet scent through the noisome airs of that old and ill-drained quarter. The visitor softly opened the gate and entered up a pathway flagged with squares of black-and-white stone that were broken and uneven. From the front window--a wide bay shrouded in vines--the light squeezed in narrow slits. John Gault pulled the old-fashioned bell and stood listening to its jingling note. There was a step in the passage within, and the light shone through the two narrow panes of glass that flanked the front door on either side. A key turned and the door was opened. In the aperture Viola Reed stood with a kerosene lamp flickering in her hand. She held a piece of light-colored material in the other hand. As her glance fell on the visitor she made an instinctive movement as if to hide this. "Oh, is it you?" she said. "Come in. I'm glad you've come!"