ust see me--I think I will get up. But only if he says
must: you remember that.'

Picotee departed on her errand. She paused on the staircase trembling,
and thinking between the thrills how very far would have been the conduct
of her poor slighted self from proud recalcitration had Mr. Julian's
gentle request been addressed to her instead of to Ethelberta; and she
went some way in the painful discovery of how much more tantalizing it
was to watch an envied situation that was held by another than to be out
of sight of it altogether. Here was Christopher waiting to bestow love,
and Ethelberta not going down to receive it: a commodity unequalled in
value by any other in the whole wide world was being wantonly wasted
within that very house. If she could only have stood to-night as the
beloved Ethelberta, and not as the despised Picotee, how different would
be this going down! Thus she went along, red and pale moving in her
cheeks as in the Northern Lights at their strongest time.

Meanwhile Christopher had sat waiting minute by minute till the evening
shades grew browner, and the fire sank low. Joey, finding himself not
particularly wanted upon the premises after the second inquiry, had
slipped out to witness a nigger performance round the corner, and Julian
began to think himself forgotten by all the household. The perception
gradually cooled his emotions and enabled him to hold his hat quite
steadily.

When Picotee gently thrust open the door she was surprised to find the
room in darkness, the fire gone completely out, and the form of
Christopher only visible by a faint patch of light, which, coming from a
lamp on the opposite side of the way and falling upon the mirror, was
thrown as a pale nebulosity upon his shoulder. Picotee was too flurried
at sight of the familiar outline to know what to do, and, instead of
going or calling for a light, she mechanically advanced into the room.
Christopher did not turn or move in any way, and then she perceived that
he had begun to doze in his chair.

Instantly, with the precipitancy of the timorous, she said, 'Mr. Julian!'
and touched him on the shoulder--murmuring then, 'O, I beg pardon, I--I
will get a light.'

Christopher's consciousness returned, and his first act, before rising,
was to exclaim, in a confused manner, 'Ah--you have come--thank you,
Berta!' then impulsively to seize her hand, as it hung beside his head,
and kiss it passionately. He stood up, still ho