f the fire. Then she turned the full
light on again and entered the room, dropping into one big leather chair
at the side of the fireplace and indicating another big chair on the
opposite side. She had no notion of sitting near him or of luring him to
her side to-night. She had read him aright. Hers was the demure part to
play, the reserved, shy maiden, the innocent, child-like, womanly woman.
She would play it, but she would humble him! So she had vowed with her
little white teeth set in her red lips as she stood before her
dressing-table mirror that night when he had fled from her red room and
her.

Well pleased, with a sigh of relief he dropped into the chair and sat
watching her, talking idly, as one who is feeling his way to a pleasant
intimacy of whose nature he is not quite sure. She was very sweet and
sympathetic about the examinations, told how she hated them herself and
thought they ought to be abolished; said he was a wonder, that her
cousin had told her he was a regular shark, and yet he hadn't let
himself be spoiled by it, either. She flattered him gently with that
deference a girl can pay to a man which makes her appear like an angel
of light, and fixes him for any confidence in the world he has to give.
She sat so quietly, with big eyes lifted now and then, talking earnestly
and appreciatively of fine and noble things, that all his best thoughts
about her were confirmed. He watched her, thinking what a lovely,
lovable woman she was, what gentle sympathy and keen appreciation of
really fine qualities she showed, child even though she seemed to be! He
studied her, thinking what a friend she might be to that other poor girl
in her loneliness and sorrow if she only would. He didn't know that he
was yielding again to the lure that the red light had made the last time
he was there. He didn't realize that, red light or white light, he was
being led on. He only knew that it was a pleasure to talk to her, to be
near her, to feel her sympathy; and that something had unlocked the
innermost depths of his heart, the place he usually kept to himself,
even away from the fellows. He had never quite opened it to a human
being before. Tennelly had come nearer to getting a glimpse than any
one. But now he was really going to open it, for he had at last found
another human being who could understand and appreciate.

"May I shut off the bright light and sit in the firelight?" he asked,
and Gila acquiesced sweetly. It was jus