action.

Laurie, a hair-brush in each hand, stared hard at the picture.

"Isn't she charming!" he cried again.

Bangs's reply revealed a severely practical side of his nature.

"She'll have a beastly cold in the head if she doesn't shut that
window," he grumpily suggested. But his interest, too, was aroused. He
stared at the girl in the mirror with an attention almost equal to
Laurie's.

As they looked, she suddenly stirred and moved backward, as if occultly
warned of their survey. They saw her close the window, and, drawing a
chair close to it, sit down and stare out through the pane, still with
that intent, impersonal expression. Bangs strolled back to the
dressing-case and resumed his interrupted toilet. Laurie, fumbling
vaguely with his brushes, kept his eyes on the girl in the mirror.

"Do you suppose we could see her if we went out on the street?" he
asked, suddenly.

"Her? Oh, you mean that girl?" With difficulty Bangs recalled his
thoughts from Haxon's new play. "No, I don't think so," he decided. "You
see, we're up on the tenth floor, so she must be fairly high up, too."

"She's a wonder." Laurie was still gazing into the mirror. "Prettiest
girl I've ever seen, I think," he reflected aloud.

Bangs snorted.

"She's probably a peroxide," he said. "Even if she isn't, she can't hold
a candle to your sister."

"Oh, Barbara--" Laurie considered the question of Barbara's beauty as if
it were new to him. "Babs is good-looking," he handsomely conceded. "But
there's something about this girl that's unusual. Perhaps it's her
expression. She doesn't look happy."

Bangs sighed with ostentation.

"If you want to study some one that isn't happy, look at me," he invited
warmly. "If that play of mine isn't out of me pretty soon, I'll have to
have an operation!"

Laurie made no reply to this pathetic prediction, and Bangs sadly shook
his head and concluded his toilet, meditating gloomily the while on the
unpleasant idiosyncrasies of every one he knew. To see Devon turn
suddenly into a loafer upset all his theories as well as all his plans.

Laurie, for some reason, dawdled more than usual that morning. It was
after eleven before he went to breakfast. An hour earlier Bangs departed
alone for their pet restaurant.

The girl in the mirror remained at her window for a long time, and
Laurie watched her in growing fascination. It was not until she rose and
disappeared that he felt moved to consider so sordid a ques