e words. He knew instinctively that he would like her and that she
would be a friend to him.

"Miss Carrillo has been more than kind to me," he said. "I often wonder
why she is," he added, returning Betty's smile.

"She likes you," said Betty, with a frankness that startled him a
little. He glanced toward Consuello and saw that she was regarding Betty
with an amused look.

Betty moved toward a door at the side of the room.

"Will you care if I leave you?" she said. "Please do not think it
rudeness. I have been doing a little studying which I must finish
tonight and----"

"I'm intruding, I know," interrupted John.

"You're not," she remonstrated with the candidness that John found later
was so engaging. Her smile overcame his temporary embarrassment. "I'll
see you again, I'm sure," she added, nodding slightly before she
stepped into the other room, closing the door behind her.

"What do you think of our little home?" Consuello asked as he turned
toward her. She was seated in the chair Betty had left.

"It's like you," he said, feeling free to take the chair near her. "It
is so genuinely--beautiful." This time he felt no hesitancy in saying
it.

"And what of it do you like best of all?" she asked quickly.

He looked around the room slowly until his eyes rested on a wide
casement window opening out over a deep sill on which blood-red
geraniums nestling in the rich green foliage of the plant, grew in a
box. Faintly, against the skyline as he looked through this window he
saw the curving outline of a hill. The window panes, swung inward, were
divided into small squares by the crosspieces.

"That," he said, without turning his eyes from the window.

"I knew----." She hesitated. He glanced toward her inquiringly. "I knew
you would," she said. "That is my window. The hill you see from it is my
hill. Did you ever read the verse by Martha Haskell Clark that inspired
the designing of that window?"

He shook his head. She rose and crossed to the window and stood framed
to her waistline in the outer casement. She looked out into the night,
toward "her" hill, the fingers of one hand touching the petals of one of
the crimson blossoms. Softly she recited:

"Life did not bring me silken gowns,
Nor jewels for my hair,
Nor sight of gabled, foreign towns
In distant countries fair,
But I can glimpse, beyond my pane, a green and friendly hill,
And red geraniums aflame upon my window-si