For a moment, appealing, she had seemed nearer to him, but now she retreated spiritually, slipped behind her cold indifference. “There will be nothing more to-night; if he grows worse you will have to move into the house.” She left him abruptly, gathering her filmy skirt from the grass, an elusive shape with gleams on her hair, her arms and neck white for an instant and then veiled in the scarf of night. In his room he could still hear, mingled with the faint, muffled squeaking of the mice in the empty hayloft, Hardinge's voice, jerky, laborious, “a categorical imperative... categorical imperative.” He wondered what that meant applied to love? An errant air brought him the unmistakable odor of white lilacs, an ineffable impression of Eliza. XXXIX THE day following found him installed in the house, in a small chamber formed where the tower fronted upon the third story. At luncheon a place was laid for him at the table with Annot and her father, where the attentions of the disdainful and shapely maid positively quivered with suppressed scorn. Anthony had found in his room fifty dollars in an envelope, upon which Annot had scribbled that he might need a few things; and, at liberty in the afternoon, he boarded an electric car for the city, where he invested in fresh and shining pumps, and other necessities. The house was dark when he inserted his newly acquired latchkey in the front door and made his way softly aloft. But a thread of light was shining under the door of Rufus Har-dinge's study. Later--he had just turned out the light--a short knock fell upon his door. “Me,” Annot answered his instant query. “I am going to ask you to dress and come to my father. It may be unnecessary; he may go quietly to bed; but go he must.” He found her in a dressing gown that fell in heavy, straight folds of saffron satin, her feet thrust in quaint Turkish slippers with curled points; while over her shoulders slipped and slid the coppery rope of her hair. She led the way to the study, which she entered without knocking. Anthony saw the biologist bent over pages spread in the concentrated light of a green shaded globe. In a glass case against the wall some moldy bones were mounted and labelled; fragmentary and sinister-appearing casts gleamed whitely from a stand; and, everywhere, was the orderly confusion of books and papers that had distinguished the library. “Come, Rufus,” Annot laid her hand upon his shoulder; “it's bedtime for all scientists. You promised me you would be in by eleven.” He gazed at her with the hasty regard directed at an ill-timed, casual stranger. “Yes, yes,” he ejaculated impatiently, “get to bed. I'll follow... some crania tracings, prognathic angles--” “To-morrow will do for those,” she insisted gently, “you are making yourself ill again--”