“A pot-boiler—designed, in other words, not for fame, but to furnish food and raiment. But, come,” she added, “I’ve worked enough for one day and I need some fresh air. Will you come along?” “I certainly will!” he said, his face lighting, and he watched her while she stowed her paints away in a box, giving them, together with the easel and the unfinished painting, into the care of one of the attendants. “Now wait till I get my hat and coat,” she said, “and off we go.” She was back in a few moments, her piquant face set off by a most becoming toque, and her painting apron replaced by a long wrap. “All right,” she said, and a moment later they were walking down the steps together. Not till then did he have an opportunity to look at her, and he was struck with a sudden sense of strangeness. This was not the Betty Heywood he had known, but a woman brighter, more dashing, more self-assured. He was surprised, in a way, to find that there was no shadow of her father’s failure on her. He had expected to find her labouring with that sorrow, or at least showing visible traces of it, and he wondered how she had escaped so completely. She glanced at him once or twice, as they turned together along one of the paths of the park, and opened her lips to speak, but closed them again, as though hesitating how to begin. “You’re still at Wadsworth?” she asked, at last. “Oh, yes.” “In the dispatchers’ office?” “Chief dispatcher now,” he said. “Are you?” she said. “Isn’t that fine! But I knew you’d work your way right up. Do you know, you’ve developed into just the sort of man that you were a boy.” “Doesn’t everybody?” “Oh, no indeed. Very few people do. Most of us grow crooked—there’s always something in the path that throws us out of line. Sometimes it throws us up and sometimes it throws us down, but you’ve grown right straight ahead. Now I can tell by the way you look at me that I’m not at all the kind of woman you expected I would be.” He was a little disconcerted at this frankness. “No,” he said, at last, “you’re right there. I can’t quite make you out.” “I’ve had obstacles, you see,” she said, her face clouding for an instant. “I’ve grown crooked.” “I heard of your mother’s death,” he said, gently. “I shall never forget her, though I met her only once.” “Yes—dear mother. She thought a great deal of you. So did father.” “Your father was very kind to me,” he said. She looked quickly into his face. “Things have not been well with us,” she said, with a little catch in her voice. “I had to go to work. I found I had some little artistic talent, and I turned it to account. And I’ve made a lot of good friends here.” She looked at him again. “You’ve heard that I’m going to be married?” she asked, suddenly. “Yes,” he answered, as evenly as he could. “Mr. Round said something about it to-day.”