when she smiled.

His long and terrible experience made its own merciless discoveries,
in the nervous movement of her eyelids and her lips. The poor girl,
pleasing herself with the idea of having produced the right impression
on him at last, had only succeeded in becoming an object of medical
inquiry, pursued in secret. When he companionably took a chair by her
side, and let Zo climb on his knee, he was privately regretting his cold
reception of Mr. Null. Under certain conditions of nervous excitement,
Carmina might furnish an interesting case. "If I had been commonly
civil to that fawning idiot," he thought, "I might have been called into
consultation."

They were all three seated--but there was no talk. Zo set the example.

"You haven't tickled me yet," she said. "Show Carmina how you do it."

He gravely operated on the back of Zo's neck; and his patient
acknowledged the process with a wriggle and a scream. The performance
being so far at an end, Zo called to the dog, and issued her orders once
more.

"Now make Tinker kick his leg!"

Benjulia obeyed once again. The young tyrant was not satisfied yet.

"Now tickle Carmina!" she said.

He heard this without laughing: his fleshless lips never relaxed into
a smile. To Carmina's unutterable embarrassment, he looked at her, when
she laughed, with steadier attention than ever. Those coldly-inquiring
eyes exercised some inscrutable influence over her. Now they made her
angry; and now they frightened her. The silence that had fallen on them
again, became an unendurable infliction. She burst into talk; she was
loud and familiar--ashamed of her own boldness, and quite unable to
control it. "You are very fond of Zo!" she said suddenly.

It was a perfectly commonplace remark--and yet, it seemed to perplex
him.

"Am I?" he answered.

She went on. Against her own will, she persisted in speaking to him.
"And I'm sure Zo is fond of you."

He looked at Zo. "Are you fond of me?" he asked.

Zo, staring hard at him, got off his knee; retired to a little distance
to think; and stood staring at him again.

He quietly repeated the question. Zo answered this time--as she had
formerly answered Teresa in the Gardens. "I don't know."

He turned again to Carmina, in a slow, puzzled way. "I don't know
either," he said.

Hearing the big man own that he was no wiser than herself, Zo returned
to him--without, however, getting on his knee again. She clasped
her chubby hands under