"What was it, Uncle Ranny, dear?" she breathed. A sort of bittersweet pain went through me at the epithet and I reviled myself inwardly for the impurity of my dark mind in the presence of this simple, lovely purity. A profound sigh escaped me as I leaned my elbows on the table and made a feeble effort to smile at the mocking visage of Fate. "I cannot go back to Visconti’s any more, Alicia," I told her. "Something has happened. That is ended. I must look about for something else." "Oh!" she gasped, "is it as bad as that?" "As bad as that," I repeated mechanically. "Then I know it was nothing you could help," she answered with a sudden radiance that was like a benediction. "So there is no use worrying about that. But you mean the money," and her face clouded anxiously. "But I know what I’ll do, Uncle Ranny," she came gliding toward me. "There is always Mr. Andrews for me, you know. You remember what he said: He’ll take me back any time." An instant of blackness was succeeded by a sudden burst of illumination. Andrews! Andrews and the library—the library, all catalogued—complete! Andrews would either buy it or help me to dispose of it, and Alicia and the children need not after all suffer by my catastrophe. My books were more like my flesh and blood, and to part with them—-but that consideration was of singularly brief endurance at the moment. Those books, like a troop of old friends; would rescue us all from disaster—come like a phalanx between us and defeat. "You amazing child!" I cried, leaping to my feet. "Light!—You’ve brought me light! Andrews!—The very man! To-morrow I am going to Andrews!" I seized her by the shoulders and whirled her about the room like a marionette in a savage burst of energy. Alicia gasped and, spinning away, laughed wildly with a laughter that bordered upon sobs. I dread to reflect what our neighbors would have concluded, had they observed through the windows the strange Dionysian rite of the quiet middle-aged bachelor and his youthful pretty ward. "Now go to bed, child," I commanded brusquely. "I have some thinking to do." "Shall I make you some coffee?" she pleaded, coming toward me, still laughing. "No—go to bed!" Before I was aware she had left a darting birdlike kiss upon my cheek and fled like a breeze from the room. My eyes dwelt upon the door for a space where she had vanished, and then they turned involuntarily to the serried peaceful rows of books that had been my life,—that now, in the last extremity of need, must, like the camel in the desert, yield up their blood to be my livelihood. The following morning, that is to-day, I made my way to Andrews, armed with my catalogue, and greatly to that good fellow’s astonishment offered him the sale of my library. He stared at me in blank amazement for an instant and then, recovering himself, declared that he would like to see it. "Come back to lunch with me," I suggested.