osti.

And absorbedly Barry Elder listened, his eyes on her changing face. When
she paused he flung in some question or some anecdote of his own times
in Italy and Sandy was often roused by unseasonable laughter, and
thudded his tail in sleepy friendliness before dozing off to his dreams
again.

Then like a flash, as swiftly as it had come, the excited glow of
recollection was an extinguished flame, leaving her shivering before a
nearer memory.

For Barry Elder asked one question too many. He brought the present down
upon them.

"And how do you like America?" he asked. "Has it been good fun for you
up here?"

Only the blind could have missed the change that came over the girl's
face, blotting out its laughter and etching in queer, startled fear.

"It has been--very gay," she stammered.

Despairingly she asked herself why she still tried to hide her story
from him since in the morning it must all come out. He would know all
about her then. And what must he be thinking already of her stammered
evasions?

Oh, if only on that yesterday, which seemed a thousand yesterdays away,
she had stayed closely by her Cousin Jane! If she had not let her folly
wreck all her life!

Bitterly ironic to know that all the time Barry Elder was here, at hand.
If only she had known! Had he just come?

She wondered and asked the question.

And at that Barry's face changed as if he had remembered something he
would have been as glad to forget.

"Oh--I've been here a few days," he gave back vaguely.

She glanced about the shadowy room. "So alone?"

A wry smile touched his mouth. "I came for alone-ness. I had a play to
write--I wanted to work some things out for myself," and indefinably but
certainly Maria Angelina caught the impression that all the things he
wanted to work out for himself in this solitude were not connected with
his play.

His linked hands had slipped over his knees and he looked ahead of him
very steadily into the fire, and Maria Angelina had a feeling that he
looked that way into the fire many evenings, so oddly, grimly intent,
with oblivious eyes and faintly ironic lips.

He was quiet so long, without moving, that she felt as if he had
forgotten her. He did not look happy. . . . Something dark had touched
him. . . .

"Is it something you want that you cannot get, Signor?" she asked him in
a grave little voice.

He turned his eyes to her, and she saw there was smoldering fire beneath
their surface brigh