Evelyn menaced the ember with the iron rod but did not touch it. "The lady's position is one of great delicacy," continued John. "Between her instinct for self defense, and her gracious hospitality, she wavers. A touch might revive the flame, or it might extinguish it utterly! She hesitates between two inclinations--" "Why should you intimate that I hesitate?" "Her seeming reluctance to apply the poker to the crucial point, speaks for itself," continued John, solemnly, while Evelyn still hung over the fitful flame, which was growing fainter and fainter. "She's clearly afraid of the chance of resuscitating the fire and thereby saving a poor guest from the cold, hard world." Evelyn administered a gentle prod; the burnt fragment of wood fell apart, the flame flared hopefully once and then passed into a wraith of itself that curled dolorously into the chimney. "You see you made me do it," said Evelyn, turning on him. He looked at her very seriously and there was no mirth in his laugh. "Good night," he said, and came toward her. "I feel like a burnt sacrifice." "But you brought it on yourself! I wish, though, you'd stay to dinner. Sandwiches aren't very filling." "In wholesale lots they are. Mine were seven; and my strength is as the strength of ten because the punch was pure." He had buttoned himself into his ulster, which magnified his tall, broad figure, and was walking toward the door. His time was now filled with congenial work, which he was doing well, but still he did not quite lose that air of injury, of having suffered defeat, which had from the first touched her in him. When Grant, who had not returned to school after the Christmas holidays, came in, she was still standing by the fire. He had been coasting on the hillside, and was aglow from the exercise. "I met Mr. Saxton outside and asked him to stay to dinner," said the boy, helping himself to sandwiches at the tea table. "I asked him, too," said Evelyn, "but he couldn't stay. I didn't know he was a friend of yours, Grant." "Well, he's all right," continued Grant, biting into a fresh sandwich, and unconsciously adopting one of his father's phrases. "He doesn't guy me the way Warry does. He talks to me as if I had some sense, and he's going to let me ride on the trolley plow the next time it snows. He's a Harvard man. I want to go to Harvard, Evelyn." The girl laughed. "You're a funny boy, Grant," she said. CHAPTER XXXIII A DISAPPEARANCE