"Mother has gone upstairs, but come in. You know I always read late. And I am so glad to hear about the plans." The strong night wind brushed boisterously through the open door, ruffling the girl's loosely coiled hair. She put her hands to her head to tighten the hairpins here and there. If the man could have read colors in the dark hall, he would have seen that Helen's face, usually too pale, had flushed. His ears were quick enough to detect the tremulous note in her voice, the touch of surprise and sudden feeling. It answered something electric in himself, something that had driven him to her across the city straightway from Mrs. Phillips's house! He followed her into the circle of lamplight, and sat down heavily in the chair that she had been occupying. "What's this thing you are reading?" he asked in his usual tone of authority, picking up the bulky volume beneath the lamp. "Hobson's 'Social Problem.' Where did you get hold of that? It's pretty heavy reading, isn't it?" His tolerantly amused tone indicated the value he put on women's efforts to struggle with abstract ideas. "Professor Sturges recommended it in his last lecture. It isn't hard--only it makes me feel so ignorant!" "Um," he commented, turning over the leaves critically. "But tell me about Mrs. Phillips and the house." There was an awkward constraint between them, not that the hour or the circumstance of their being alone made them self-conscious. There was nothing unusual in his being there late like this, after Mrs. Spellman had gone upstairs. But to-night there was in the air the consciousness that many things had happened since they had been together alone: the old man's death, the funeral, the will,--most of all the will! He told her of the new house in Forest Park. It had been decided upon that evening, his preliminary sketches having been received enthusiastically. But he lacked all interest in it. He was thinking how the past week had changed everything in his life, and most of all his relation with this girl. Because of that he had not been to see her before, and he felt uncertain of himself in being here now. "Mother and I have just been speaking of you. We haven't seen you since the funeral, you know," Helen remarked, saying simply what was in her mind. Her words carried no reproach. Yet at once he felt that he was put on the defensive; it was not easy to explain why he had avoided the Maple Street house. "A lot has happened lately," he replied vaguely. "Things have changed pretty completely for me!" A tone of bitterness crept into his voice in spite of himself. He wanted sympathy; for that, in part, he had come to her to-night. At the same time he felt that it was a weak thing to do, that he should have gone almost anywhere but to her. "It takes a man a few days to catch his breath," he continued, "when he finds he's been cut off with a shilling, as they say in the play."