ish with the subcutaneous blackness of his
beard. His dress was so distinctly late in style as to seem almost
foppish; but there was nothing of the exquisite in his erect and
athletic form, or in his piercing eye.

She was ruddily fair, with that luxuriant auburn-brown hair which goes
with eyes of amberish-brown and freckles. These latter she had, I
observed with a renewal of the thought of the country girls and the old
district school. She was slender of waist, full of bust, and, after a
lissome, sylph-like fashion, altogether charming in form. With all her
roundness, she was slight and a little undersized.

So much of her as there was, the young fellow seemed ready to absorb,
regarding her with avid eyes--a gaze which she seldom met. But whenever
he gave his attention to the mahlstick, her eyes sought his countenance
with a look which was almost scrutiny. It was as if some extrinsic force
drew her glance to his face, until the stronger compulsion of her
modesty drove it away at the return of his black orbs. My heart
recognized with a throb the freemasonry into which I had lately been
initiated, and, all unknown to them, I hailed them as members of the
order.

Their conversation came to me in shreds and fragments, which I did not
at all care to hear. I recognized in it those inanities with which youth
busies the lips, leaving the mind at rest, that the interplay of
magnetic discharges from heart to heart may go on uninterruptedly. It is
a beautiful provision of nature, but I did not at that time admire it. I
pitied them. Alice and I had passed through that stage, and into the
phase marked by long and eloquent silences.

"I was brought up to think," I remember to have heard the fair stranger
say, following out, apparently, some subject under discussion between
them, "that the surest way to make a child steal jam is to spy upon him.
I should feel ashamed."

"Quite right," said he, "but in Europe and in the East, and even here in
Chicago, in some circles, it is looked upon as indispensable, you
know."

"In art, at least," she went on, "there is no sex. Whoever can help me
in my work is a companion that I don't need any chaperon to protect me
from. If I wasn't perfectly sure of that, I should give up and go back
home."

"Now, don't draw the line so as to shut me out," he protested. "How can
I help you with your work?"

She looked him steadily in the face now, her intent and questioning
regard shading off into a