out you: it's only about Romeo and Juliet."

"See here!" he exclaimed. "You aren't at your mind-reading again, are
you? There are times when it won't do, you know!"

She leaned toward him a little, as if companionably: they were walking
slowly, and this geniality of hers brought her shoulder in light contact
with his for a moment. "Do you dislike my mind-reading?" she asked, and,
across their two just touching shoulders, gave him her sudden look of
smiling wistfulness. "Do you hate it?"

He shook his head. "No, I don't," he said, gravely. "It's quite
pleasant. But I think it says, 'Gentlemen, beware!'"

She instantly moved away from him, with the lawless and frank laugh of
one who is delighted to be caught in a piece of hypocrisy. "How lovely!"
she cried. Then she pointed ahead. "Our walk is nearly over. We're
coming to the foolish little house where I live. It's a queer little
place, but my father's so attached to it the family have about given up
hope of getting him to build a real house farther out. He doesn't mind
our being extravagant about anything else, but he won't let us alter one
single thing about his precious little old house. Well!" She halted, and
gave him her hand. "Adieu!"

"I couldn't," he began; hesitated, then asked: "I couldn't come in with
you for a little while?"

"Not now," she said, quickly. "You can come----" She paused.

"When?"

"Almost any time." She turned and walked slowly up the path, but he
waited. "You can come in the evening if you like," she called back to
him over her shoulder.

"Soon?"

"As soon as you like!" She waved her hand; then ran indoors and watched
him from a window as he went up the street. He walked rapidly, a fine,
easy figure, swinging his stick in a way that suggested exhilaration.
Alice, staring after him through the irregular apertures of a lace
curtain, showed no similar buoyancy. Upon the instant she closed
the door all sparkle left her: she had become at once the simple and
sometimes troubled girl her family knew.

"What is going on out there?" her mother asked, approaching from the
dining-room.

"Oh, nothing," Alice said, indifferently, as she turned away. "That Mr.
Russell met me downtown and walked up with me."

"Mr. Russell? Oh, the one that's engaged to Mildred?"

"Well--I don't know for certain. He didn't seem so much like an engaged
man to me." And she added, in the tone of thoughtful preoccupation:
"Anyhow--not so terribly!"

Then she ra