"Have you seen the last volume of _décadent_ poetry? Isn't the binding nice?" Odd felt himself justly, but rather severely, reproved; yet the gentle candor of her eyes was kind and soothing. Katherine was playing the "Chopin" from Schumann's "Carnaval," and Peter, still holding his ankle and feeling rather like a naughty little boy forgiven, did not look at the fantastic volume she held, but at Hilda herself. How blue the shadows were on the milky whiteness of her skin. Odd's eyes followed the thick, soft eddies of hair about her forehead. "Aren't the margins generous?" said Hilda, turning the pages; "a mere trickle of print through the whiteness. Some of the verses are really very pretty," and she talked gayly, in her gentle way, as they went through the pages together. CHAPTER IV It was just past four when Peter walked up the Rue Bonaparte and stationed himself at the corner of the Rue Vavin and the Rue d'Assas, opposite the Luxembourg Gardens. From this point of vantage he could look up and down the street, and there would be no chance of missing her. She rarely reached home till past six, and, even allowing for very slow walking, he was if anything too early. He felt, as he opened his umbrella--it had begun to rain--that his present position might look foolish, but was certainly justifiable. He would ask Hilda no questions, force in no way her confidence, but really on the gray dreariness of such a day she ought not to reject but rather to be glad for his proffered and unexpected companionship. The combined dreariness of the afternoon with its cold rain, the gray street, the desolate-looking branches of the trees in the Luxembourg Gardens, inspired him with a painful sympathy for Hilda's pursuits. She was, probably, working in one of these tall, severe houses; perhaps with some atelier chum fallen beneath the ban of Mrs. Archinard's disapproval, and clung to with a girl's enthusiasm. Disobedient of Hilda, very. The chum might be masculine. This was a new and disagreeable supposition; a Marie Bashkirtseff, Bastien Lepage affair; Bohemia gloried in such audacities; it was difficult to associate Hilda with such feats of independence. There was a mystery somewhere, however, and if not mountainous, it must be more than mere mole-hill. It was very windy, and the rain blew slantingly. Katherine would find the situation amusing. A vision of the sympathetic amusement was followed by the realization that to betray his Quixotism might be to betray Hilda's confidence. Yet Hilda had made no confidence. Peter rebelled at the mere suggestion of concealment. Knowing all, Katherine could surely know that he had been admitted into the outer courts of the mystery. He had ample time for every variety of reflection, for he had been standing in the rain for over an hour, when Hilda appeared not far from him, stepping from the door of one of the largest and most dignified of the gray houses. She