She had been shy of him at first, waiting for him to seek her. After the night of the bazaar and that wondrous waltz, she had felt that he must fly to speak to her at the nearest opportunity, and tell her that he had played for her, and her alone; and in return she had longed to assure him of her divining sympathy. But he did not come. She invented many excuses for this, but it gave her a sharp disappointment of which he was necessarily unconscious. As she met him casually at different places,—with the old quizzical gleam in his eye, and that peculiar manner,—his lightest word became fraught with deep meaning, over which she pondered, refusing to believe that the world she lived in was entirely of her own creation. In these last two months she had always an undercurrent of thought for him, whether she was practicing or sewing, or chaffing with Billy, or receiving the gallant but somewhat heavy attentions of Mr. Sutton. With Lawson’s avoidance of her had come a childish, uncalculating’ impulse to attract. Dosia had not told the truth when she said that she could not help his speaking to her; she knew very well the morning he would have passed her by in the train, as usual, if her eyes had not met his. Barr never presumed,—he knew the place allotted to him,—but he accepted permission. When he sat down by her, she swiftly wished him away again; yet her heart beat under his cool glance—a glance which seemed to read her every thought. These interviews, in which the conversations were of the lightest, yet in which she felt subtle intimations, were a delicious and stinging pleasure, like eating ice. There had been a fitful burst of suburban gayety about Christmas-time and after—a delightful flare that burned up red and glowing, only to sink back gradually into the darkness of monotony. There was that fall into a hum-drum condition of living, instigated by bad weather, which shuts up each household into itself; the men were kept later down-town, and the women had the usual influx of winter colds and minor maladies which interfere with planned festivities. The younger sort had engagements, individually and collectively, for “things in town,” either coming out on the last train or staying comfortably overnight with friends. An assembly dance planned for Shrove Tuesday had fallen through.