me
you'll come, and then--"

"I _will_ come, Athalie! I _want_ to," he said impetuously. "You're
more interesting,--a lot jollier,--than any girl I know. I always
suspected it, too--the bigger fool I to lose all that time we might
have had together--"

She, surprised for a moment, lifted her pretty head and laughed
outright, checking his somewhat impulsive monologue. And he looked at
her, disturbed.

"I'm only laughing because you speak of all those years we might have
had together, as though--" And suddenly she checked herself in her
turn, on the brink of saying something that was not so funny after
all.

Probably he understood what impulse had prompted her to terminate
abruptly both laughter and discourse, for he reddened and gazed rather
fixedly at the radiator which was now clanking and clinking in a very
noisy manner.

"You ought to have a fireplace and an open fire," he said. "It's the
cosiest thing on earth--with a cat on the hearth and a big chair and a
good book.... Athalie, do you remember that stove? And how I sat there
in wet shooting clothes and stockinged feet?"

"Yes," she said, drawing her own bare ones further under her chair.

"Do you know what you looked like to me when you came in so silently,
dressed in your red hood and cloak?"

"What did I look like?"

"A little fairy princess."

"_I?_ In that ragged cloak?"

"_I_ didn't see the rags. All I saw was your lithe little fairy figure
and your yellow hair and your wonderful dark eyes in the ruddy light
from the stove. I tell you, Athalie, I was enchanted."

"How odd! I never dreamed you thought that of me when I stood there
looking at you, utterly lost in admiration--"

"Oh, come, Athalie!" he laughed; "you are getting back at me!"

"It's true. I thought you the most wonderful boy I had ever seen."

"Until I disillusioned you," he said.

"You never did, C. Bailey, Junior."

"What! Not when I proved a piker?"

But she only smiled into his amused and challenging eyes and slowly
shook her head.

Once or twice, mechanically, he had slipped a flat gold cigarette case
from his pocket, and then, mechanically still, had put it back. Not
accustomed to modern men of his caste she had not paid much attention
to the unconscious hint of habit. Now as he did it again it occurred
to her to ask him why he did not smoke.

"May I?"

"Yes. I like it."

"Do you smoke?"

"No--now and then when I'm troubled."

"Is that often?" he asked ligh