“Oh, yes, I'm well, I suppose. Still, I have felt better in my life,” smiled Arkwright, with some constraint. “Oh, I'm sorry,” murmured the girl, striving so hard to speak with impersonal unconcern that she did not notice the inaptness of her reply. “Eh? Sorry I've felt better, are you?” retorted Arkwright, with nervous humor. Then, because he was embarrassed, he said the one thing he had meant not to say: “Don't you think I'm quite a stranger? It's been some time since I've been here.” Alice, smarting under the sting of what she judged to be the only possible cause for his embarrassment, leaped to this new opportunity to show her lack of interest. “Oh, has it?” she murmured carelessly. “Well, I don't know but it has, now that I come to think of it.” Arkwright frowned gloomily. A week ago he would have tossed back a laughingly aggrieved remark as to her unflattering indifference to his presence. Now he was in no mood for such joking. It was too serious a matter with him. “You've been busy, no doubt, with--other matters,” he presumed forlornly, thinking of Calderwell. “Yes, I have been busy,” assented the girl. “One is always happier, I think, to be busy. Not that I meant that I needed the work to _be_ happy,” she added hastily, in a panic lest he think she had a consuming sorrow to kill. “No, of course not,” he murmured abstractedly, rising to his feet and crossing the room to the piano. Then, with an elaborate air of trying to appear very natural, he asked jovially: “Anything new to play to me?” Alice arose at once. “Yes. I have a little nocturne that I was playing to Mr. Calderwell last night.” “Oh, to Calderwell!” Arkwright had stiffened perceptibly. “Yes. _He_ didn't like it. I'll play it to you and see what you say,” she smiled, seating herself at the piano. “Well, if he had liked it, it's safe to say I shouldn't,” shrugged Arkwright. “Nonsense!” laughed the girl, beginning to appear more like her natural self. “I should think you were Mr. Cyril Henshaw! Mr. Calderwell _is_ partial to ragtime, I'll admit. But there are some good things he likes.” “There are, indeed, _some_ good things he likes,” returned Arkwright, with grim emphasis, his somber eyes fixed on what he believed to be the one especial object of Calderwell's affections at the moment. Alice, unaware both of the melancholy gaze bent upon herself and of the cause thereof, laughed again merrily. “Poor Mr. Calderwell,” she cried, as she let her fingers slide into soft, introductory chords. “He isn't to blame for not liking what he calls our lost spirits that wail. It's just the way he's made.” Arkwright vouchsafed no reply. With an abrupt gesture he turned and began to pace the room moodily. At the piano Alice slipped from the chords into the nocturne. She played it straight through, then, with a charm and skill that brought Arkwright's feet to a pause before it was half finished.