e place, and yet she seldom hurried by it or averted
her eyes. It had an unpleasant fascination for her, and a mysterious
reproach, which she did not seek to fathom. She walked on thoughtfully
to-day; and when, at the next corner, she turned into the street that
led toward home, she was given a surprise. Arthur Russell came rapidly
from behind her, lifting his hat as she saw him.

"Are you walking north, Miss Adams?" he asked. "Do you mind if I walk
with you?"

She was not delighted, but seemed so. "How charming!" she cried, giving
him a little flourish of the shapely hands; and then, because she
wondered if he had seen her coming out of the tobacco-shop, she laughed
and added, "I've just been on the most ridiculous errand!"

"What was that?"

"To order some cigars for my father. He's been quite ill, poor man, and
he's so particular--but what in the world do _I_ know about cigars?"

Russell laughed. "Well, what DO you know about 'em? Did you select by
the price?"

"Mercy, no!" she exclaimed, and added, with an afterthought, "Of course
he wrote down the name of the kind he wanted and I gave it to the
shopman. I could never have pronounced it."

CHAPTER X

In her pocket as she spoke her hand rested upon the little sack of
tobacco, which responded accusingly to the touch of her restless
fingers; and she found time to wonder why she was building up this
fiction for Mr. Arthur Russell. His discovery of Walter's device for
whiling away the dull evening had shamed and distressed her; but she
would have suffered no less if almost any other had been the discoverer.
In this gentleman, after hearing that he was Mildred's Mr. Arthur
Russell, Alice felt not the slightest "personal interest"; and there was
yet to develop in her life such a thing as an interest not personal. At
twenty-two this state of affairs is not unique.

So far as Alice was concerned Russell might have worn a placard,
"Engaged." She looked upon him as diners entering a restaurant look upon
tables marked "Reserved": the glance, slightly discontented, passes on
at once. Or so the eye of a prospector wanders querulously over staked
and established claims on the mountainside, and seeks the virgin land
beyond; unless, indeed, the prospector be dishonest. But Alice was no
claim-jumper--so long as the notice of ownership was plainly posted.

Though she was indifferent now, habit ruled her: and, at the very time
she wondered why she created fictitious cig