It was a full minute before the door swung open; and the unlooked-for wait in some way keyed the younger man’s curiosity up to the snapping point. As it finally opened, slowly, he had the startled vision of a young woman, dressed in sober black, looking half timidly out at them, with her hand still on the knob. As he noticed the wealth of her waving chestnut hair, and the poise of the head, and the quiet calmness of the eyes, that appeared almost a violet-blue in contrast to the soft pallor of her face, Durkin felt that they had made a mistake in the house number. But, seeing MacNutt step quickly inside, he himself awkwardly took off his hat. Under the spell of her quiet, almost pensive smile, he decided that she could be little more than a mere girl, until he noticed the womanly fullness of her breast and hips and what seemed a languid weariness about the eyes themselves. He also noted, and in this he felt a touch of sharp resentment, the sudden telepathic glance that passed between MacNutt and the woman; a questioning flash on her part, an answering flash on the other’s. Then she turned to Durkin, with her quiet, carelessly winning smile, and held out her hand,—and his heart thumped and pounded more drunkenly than it had done with all MacNutt’s bootlegger’s gin. Then he heard MacNutt speaking, quietly and evenly, as though talking of mere things of the moment. “This is Mr. Jim Durkin; Durkin, this is Miss Frances Candler. You two’re going to have a lot o’ trouble together, so I guess you’d better get acquainted right here—might as well make it Frank and Jim, you two, for you’re going to see a mighty good deal of one another!” “All right, Jim,” said the woman, girlishly, in a mellow, English contralto voice. Then she laughed a little, and Durkin noticed the whiteness of her fine, strong incisors, and straightway forgot them again, in the delicious possibility that he might hear that soft laughter often, and under varied circumstances. Then he flushed hot and cold, as he felt her shaking hands with him once more. Strangely sobered, he stumbled over rugs and polished squares of parquetry, after them, up two flights of stairs, listening, still dazed, to MacNutt’s hurried questions and the woman’s low answers, which sounded muffled and far away to him, as though some impalpable wall separated them from him.