With a little wail of despair she leaned back against the door. "You don't even remember me _now_?" she mourned. "Oh dear, dear, dear! And I thought _you_ were so beautiful!" Then, woman-like, her whole sympathy rushed to defend him from her own accusations. "Oh, well, it was at a masquerade party," she acknowledged generously, "and I suppose you go to a great many masquerades." Heaping up her hair like so much molten copper into the hood of her cloak, and trying desperately to snare all the wild, escaping tendrils with the softer mesh of her veil, she reached out a free hand at last and opened the door just a crack. "And to give you something to think about for the sixth day and night," she resumed suddenly, with the same strange little glint in her eyes, "to give you something to think about the sixth day, I'll tell you that I really was hungry--when I asked you for your toast. I haven't had anything to eat to-day; and--" [Illustration: "What?" cried Stanton, plunging forward in his chair] Before she could finish the sentence Stanton had sprung from his chair, and stood trying to reason out madly whether one single more stride would catch her, or lose her. "And as for something for you to think about the seventh day and night," she gasped hurriedly. Already the door had opened to her hand and her little figure stood silhouetted darkly against the bright, yellow-lighted hallway, "here's something for you to think about for _twenty_-seven days and nights!" Wildly her little hands went clutching at the woodwork. "I didn't know you were engaged to be married," she cried out passionately, "and I _loved_ you--_loved_ you--_loved_ you!" Then in a flash she was gone. IX With absolute finality the big door banged behind her. A minute later the street door, four flights down, rang out in jarring reverberation. A minute after that it seemed as though every door in every house on the street slammed shrilly. Then the charred fire-log sagged down into the ashes with a sad, puffing sigh. Then a whole row of books on a loosely packed shelf toppled over on each other with soft jocose slaps. Crawling back into his Morris chair with every bone in his body aching like a magnetized wire-skeleton charged with pain, Stanton collapsed again into his pillows and sat staring--staring into the dying fire. Nine o'clock rang out dully from the nearest church spire; ten o'clock, eleven o'clock followed in turn with monotonous, chiming insistency. Gradually the relaxing steam-radiators began to grunt and grumble into a chill quietude. Gradually along the bare, bleak stretches of unrugged floor little cold draughts of air came creeping exploringly to his feet. And still he sat staring--staring into the fast graying ashes. "Oh, Glory! Glory!" he said. "Think what it would mean if all that wonderful imagination were turned loose upon just one fellow! Even if she didn't love you, think how she'd play the game! And if she did love you--Oh, lordy; Lordy! LORDY!"