Chester Kent went back into the house with a glow at his heart. He shouted up-stairs to Sedgwick, “Go on with your work, Frank. I want to loaf and invite my soul for an hour. Where’s your reading matter?” “Shelf in the corner,” answered the artist. “You’ll find a few things in your line,—Darwin’s _Origin of Species_, Le Conte’s—” “The devil take Darwin!” cried Kent impiously. “I want _Bab Ballads_, or _Through the Looking-Glass_, or something like that, really fit for an aspiring intellect. Never mind. I’ll forage for myself.” Three minutes later he was stretched luxuriously on the divan, with the window-shade pulled down and the big electric chandelier glowing, immersed in the joyous nonsense of _Rhyme and Reason_. The wind alternately shouted profane protests at the window because it couldn’t get in, and then fell silent, waiting for an answer. In one of these lulls Kent heard footsteps outside. He dropped his book. The footsteps approached the window. Then the gale rose again, and the loose end of a garment flapped softly against the glass. He half rose, listening. There was silence outside. “Have I fallen into another mystery?” groaned Kent. “Is there no rest for the weary?” The footsteps mounted the side porch. Kent awaited a knock. None came. “Odd!” he observed to his pillow. “Few people find the outside of a door so fascinating that they stand for two minutes in a wet gale admiring it.” Tiptoeing to the door, he threw it open. There was a startled cry from without and an equally startled grunt from within. Chester Kent and Marjorie Blair stood face to face. “I—I—I beg your pardon,” gibbered Kent, whelmed instantly in a morass of embarrassment. “I—I didn’t mean to frighten you.” Feminine-wise she built up her self-possession on the ruins of his. “I wonder,” she said with a smile, “whether I’m the worse-frightened one of us.” “You see,” he said lamely, “it was so sudden, your—your coming that way. I didn’t expect you.” “And for that reason you intend to bar me from the house? It’s quite disgustingly wet out here.” With a muttered apology Kent stepped aside, and she entered. Even amid his ill-ease he could not but note how the girlish loveliness had ripened and warmed, yet without forfeiting anything of that quaint appealing wistfulness which made her charm unique. But there glinted now in her deep eyes an elfish spirit of mischief, partly inspired by the confusion of the helpless male creature before her, partly the reaction from the mingled dread and desire of the prospective meeting with Sedgwick; for she had come on a sudden uncontrollable impulse to see him, and would have turned and fled at the last minute had not Kent surprised her. Perhaps there was a little flavor of revenge for this, too, in her attitude toward him. “What a surprise to find you here, _Mrs._ Kent!” she remarked sweetly. “Or are you calling youself Mr. Blair nowadays? And how is your poor ear?”