ing Drumley came to take her to dinner at the
Casino in Central Park. She hesitated. She still liked Drumley's
mind; but latterly he had fallen into the way of gazing
furtively, with a repulsive tremulousness of his loose eyelids,
at her form and at her ankles--especially at her
ankles--especially at her ankles. This furtive debauch gave her
a shivery sense of intrusion. She distinctly liked the candid,
even the not too coarse, glances of the usual man. But not this
shy peeping. However, as there were books she particularly
wished to talk about with him, she accepted.

It was an excursion of which she was fond. They strolled along
Seventh Avenue to the Park, entered and followed the lovely
walk, quiet and green and odorous, to the Mall. They sauntered
in the fading light up the broad Mall, with its roof of boughs
of majestic trees, with its pale blue vistas of well-kept lawns.
At the steps leading to the Casino they paused to delight in the
profusely blooming wistaria and to gaze away northward into and
over what seemed an endless forest with towers and cupolas of
castle and fortress and cathedral rising serene and graceful
here and there above the sea of green. There was the sound of
tinkling fountains, the musical chink-chink of harness chains of
elegant equipages; on the Mall hundreds of children were playing
furiously, to enjoy to the uttermost the last few moments before
being snatched away to bed--and the birds were in the same
hysterical state as they got ready for their evening song. The
air was saturated with the fresh odors of spring and early
summer flowers. Susan, walking beside the homely Drumley, was a
charming and stylish figure of girlish womanhood. The year and
three months in New York had wrought the same transformations in
her that are so noticeable whenever an intelligent and observant
woman with taste for the luxuries is dipped in the magic of city
life. She had grown, was now perhaps a shade above the medium
height for women, looked even taller because of the slenderness
of her arms, of her neck, of the lines of her figure. There was
a deeper melancholy in her violet-gray eyes. Experience had
increased the allure of her wide, beautifully curved mouth.

They took a table under the trees, with beds of blooming flowers
on either hand. Drumley ordered the sort of dinner she liked,
and a bottle of champagne and a bottle of fine burgundy to make
his favorite drink--champagne and burgu