o Mr. M. J. Arkwright that he needed not to teach her,
to save her, nor yet to sympathize with her.

"How do you do?" she greeted him, with a particularly bright smile. "I'm
sure I _hope_ you are well, such a beautiful day as this."

"Oh, yes, I'm well, I suppose. Still, I have felt better in my life,"
smiled Arkwright, with some constraint.

"Oh, I'm sorry," murmured the girl, striving so hard to speak with
impersonal unconcern that she did not notice the inaptness of her reply.

"Eh? Sorry I've felt better, are you?" retorted Arkwright, with nervous
humor. Then, because he was embarrassed, he said the one thing he had
meant not to say: "Don't you think I'm quite a stranger? It's been some
time since I've been here."

Alice, smarting under the sting of what she judged to be the only
possible cause for his embarrassment, leaped to this new opportunity to
show her lack of interest.

"Oh, has it?" she murmured carelessly. "Well, I don't know but it has,
now that I come to think of it."

Arkwright frowned gloomily. A week ago he would have tossed back a
laughingly aggrieved remark as to her unflattering indifference to his
presence. Now he was in no mood for such joking. It was too serious a
matter with him.

"You've been busy, no doubt, with--other matters," he presumed
forlornly, thinking of Calderwell.

"Yes, I have been busy," assented the girl. "One is always happier,
I think, to be busy. Not that I meant that I needed the work to _be_
happy," she added hastily, in a panic lest he think she had a consuming
sorrow to kill.

"No, of course not," he murmured abstractedly, rising to his feet and
crossing the room to the piano. Then, with an elaborate air of trying to
appear very natural, he asked jovially: "Anything new to play to me?"

Alice arose at once.

"Yes. I have a little nocturne that I was playing to Mr. Calderwell last
night."

"Oh, to Calderwell!" Arkwright had stiffened perceptibly.

"Yes. _He_ didn't like it. I'll play it to you and see what you say,"
she smiled, seating herself at the piano.

"Well, if he had liked it, it's safe to say I shouldn't," shrugged
Arkwright.

"Nonsense!" laughed the girl, beginning to appear more like her natural
self. "I should think you were Mr. Cyril Henshaw! Mr. Calderwell _is_
partial to ragtime, I'll admit. But there are some good things he
likes."

"There are, indeed, _some_ good things he likes," returned Arkwright,
with grim emphasis, his somber ey