nly a
hastily scrawled note waiting for her.

"If you'll forgive the unforgivable," she read "you'll forgive me for
not being here when you come down. 'Circumstances over which I have no
control have called me away.' May we let it go at that?

"M. J. ARKWRIGHT."

As Alice Greggory's amazed, questioning eyes left the note they fell
upon the long white glove on the floor by the door. Half mechanically
she crossed the room and picked it up; but almost at once she dropped it
with a low cry.

"Billy! He--saw--Billy!" Then a flood of understanding dyed her face
scarlet as she turned and fled to the blessedly unseeing walls of her
own room.

Not ten minutes later Rosa tapped at her door with a note.

"It's from Mr. Arkwright, Miss. He's downstairs." Rosa's eyes were
puzzled, and a bit startled.

"Mr. Arkwright!"

"Yes, Miss. He's come again. That is, I didn't know he'd went--but he
must have, for he's come again now. He wrote something in a little book;
then he tore it out and gave it to me. He said he'd wait, please, for an
answer."

"Oh, very well, Rosa."

Miss Greggory took the note and spoke with an elaborate air of
indifference that was meant to express a calm ignoring of the puzzled
questioning in the other's eyes. The next moment she read this in
Arkwright's peculiar scrawl:

"If you've already forgiven the unforgivable, you'll do it again, I
know, and come down-stairs. Won't you, please? I want to see you."

Miss Greggory lifted her head with a jerk. Her face was a painful red.

"Tell Mr. Arkwright I can't possibly--" She came to an abrupt pause. Her
eyes had encountered Rosa's, and in Rosa's eyes the puzzled questioning
was plainly fast becoming a shrewd suspicion.

There was the briefest of hesitations; then, lightly, Miss Greggory
tossed the note aside.

"Tell Mr. Arkwright I'll be down at once, please," she directed
carelessly, as she turned back into the room.

But she was not down at once. She was not down until she had taken time
to bathe her red eyes, powder her telltale nose, smoothe her ruffled
hair, and whip herself into the calm, steady-eyed, self-controlled young
woman that Arkwright finally rose to meet when she came into the room.

"I thought it was only women who were privileged to change their mind,"
she began brightly; but Arkwright ignored her attempt to conventionalize
the situation.

"Thank you for coming down," he said, with a weariness that instantly
drove the for