eed, it proved to be.

Something in the girl's voice, or manner, or something in her eyes, or
something in her grace of movement, her bearing, her mingled simplicity
and dignity--or something in all these combined--had mightily impressed
him. He had seen little of women in any intimate way, and while he
honored womanhood and deferred to it, as every sound-souled man must, he
had thought himself quite indifferent to women in their individual
personality. But somehow he could not feel so with Barbara Verne, and
later in the evening he scourged himself for his folly in continuing to
think of her to the interruption of the reading he had set himself to
do.

"What's the matter with me?" he asked himself almost with irritation, as
at last he laid down the volume of Herbert Spencer's Social Statics,
over which he had been laboring in vain. "I can't read a single
paragraph with understanding. I can't keep my attention upon the lines
as I read them. I must be tired out--though I don't know what has tired
me. Fortunately I've no visitors to-night. They have all gone to hear
the Swiss Bell Ringers at the Athenaeum. I wonder if anybody took Barbara
Verne?"

Thus his thought came back again to the girl and he was annoyed with
himself for having permitted that.

"I do not know the girl at all," he reflected. "Except to bow a distant
'good-morning' or 'good-evening' at infrequent intervals, I never spoke
to her until this evening, and then the interview was one of purely
formal courtesy. And yet here I am thinking about her so persistently
that even Herbert Spencer cannot win my attention."

Then he sat for a time trying to think of something else, or trying,
with renewed resolution, to concentrate his attention upon his book.

The effort was a dismal failure. Barbara Verne's eyes gazed softly at
him out of the page, her gentle voice echoed in his ears, and the
simple, straight-forward words of thanks that she had spoken thrust out
of his mind the words of the great philosopher, as the youth endeavored
to read them.

He was sitting, in his dressing gown, with his slippered feet resting
upon a stool. In the large grate a mass of Pittsburg coal blazed and
flickered restfully. At his elbow softly burned a shaded student lamp,
on a table covered with a scarlet and black cloth, and littered with
books. The curtains--inexpensive, but heavy--were closely drawn to shut
out every suggestion of the wintry night outside.

"Confound it,