were hung with garlands of fancy, the windows
his dreaming eyes had looked from were windows into space beyond
Addington. No, these were no common walls, yet unfitting to gaze on
while you told a client you loved her. After all, on rapid second
thought, it might not seem so inapt seen through his mother's eyes, as
she was betraying herself now in more than middle age. "Ask her wherever
you find yourselves," he fancied his mother saying. "That is part of the
adventure."

Alston looked at Anne and smiled upon her and involuntarily she smiled
back, though she saw no cause for cheerfulness in the dismal errand she
had come on. She started a little, too, for Alston, in the most matter
of fact way, began with her first name.

"Anne," said he, "I have for a long time been--" he paused for a word.
The ones he found were all too dignified, too likely to be wanted in a
higher cause--"bewitched," he continued, "over Esther Blake."

The colour ran deeper into Anne's face.

"You don't want," she said, "to do anything that might hurt her? I
shouldn't want to, either. But it isn't Esther we're talking about. It's
Madame Beattie."

"I know," said Alston, "but I want you to know I have been very
much--I've made a good deal of a fool of myself over Mrs. Blake."

Still he obstinately would not say he had been in love. Anne, looking at
him with the colour rising higher and higher, hardly seemed to
understand. But suddenly she did.

"You don't mean--" she stammered. "Mr. Choate, she's married, you know,
even if she and Jeff aren't together any more. Esther is married."

"I know it," said Alston drily. "I've wished they weren't married. I've
wished I could ask her to marry me. But I don't any longer. You won't
understand at all why I say it now. Sometime I'll tell you when you've
noticed how I have to stand up against my cut and dried ways. Anne, I'm
talking to you."

She had got on her feet and was fumbling with the upper button of her
coat which had not been unloosed. But that she didn't remember now. She
was in a mechanical haste of making ready to go. Alston rose, too, and
was glad to find he was the taller. It gave him a mute advantage and he
needed all he could get.

"I'm telling you something quite important," he said, in a tone that set
her momentarily and fallaciously at ease. "It's going to be very
important to both of us. Dear Anne! darling Anne!" He broke down and
laughed, her eyes were so big with the surprise of it