ling. "Wait till after Sunday to
see if I'm right; then I'll tell you. It's a dollar to a paper dime,
K. D. B. will have something for us by Sunday, beginning with an I."

And she had. It was Internal Revenue.

"Right! right!" Condy shouted gleefully, as he and Blix were on their
way home. "I knew it. She's done with Ash--Bol, Bol--Car, and all
those, and has worked through Cod--Dem, and Dem--Eve. She's down to
Hor--Kin now, and she'll go through the whole lot before she's
done--Kin--Mag, Mag--Mot, Mot--Pal, and all the rest."

"The Encyclopaedia?"

"Don't you see it? No wonder she didn't know beans about Gibraltar! She
hadn't come to the G's by then."

"She's reading the Encyclopaedia."

"And she gets the volumes on the installment plan, don't you see?
Reads the leading articles, and then springs 'em on us. To know things
and talk about em, that's her idea of being cultured. 'One must have
an education.' Do you remember her saying that 'Oh, our matrimonial
objects are panning out beyond all expectation!"

What a delicious, never-to-be-forgotten month it was for those two!
There in the midst of life they were as much alone as upon a tropic
island. Blix had deliberately freed herself from a world that had
grown distasteful to her; Condy little by little had dropped away from
his place among the men and the women of his acquaintance, and the two
came and went together, living in a little world of their own creation,
happy in each other's society, living only in the present, and asking
nothing better than to be left alone and to their own devices.

They saw each other every day. In the morning from nine till twelve,
and in the afternoon until three, Condy worked away upon his novel, but
not an evening passed that did not see him and Blix in the dining-room
of the little flat. Thursdays and Sunday afternoons they visited the
life-boat station, and at other times prowled about the unfrequented
corners of the city, now passing an afternoon along the water front,
watching the departure of a China steamer or the loading of the great,
steel wheat ships; now climbing the ladder-like streets of Telegraph
Hill, or revisiting the Plaza, Chinatown, and the restaurant; or taking
long walks in the Presidio Reservation, watching cavalry and artillery
drills; or sitting for hours on the rocks by the seashore, watching the
ceaseless roll and plunge of the surf, the wheeling sea-birds, and the
sleek-headed seals hunting