shook a little, and dropped
it to the floor, crushing it lightly with the toe of his boot. He threw
back his handsome head and sent out the last mouthful of smoke in a
thin, lazy spiral. I remember thinking what a pity it was that he should
have crushed that costly-looking cigarette, just for me.

"My name's Orme," he said, gravely. "Peter Orme. And if yours isn't
Shaughnessy or Burke at least, then I'm no judge of what black hair and
gray eyes stand for."

"Then you're not," retorted I, laughing up at him, "for it happens to be
O'Hara--Dawn O'Hara, if ye plaze."

He picked up a trifle that lay on my desk--a pencil, perhaps, or a bit
of paper--and toyed with it, absently, as though I had not spoken.
I thought he had not heard, and I was conscious of feeling a bit
embarrassed, and very young. Suddenly he raised his smoldering eyes to
mine, and I saw that they had taken on a deeper glow. His white, even
teeth showed in a half smile.

"Dawn O'Hara," said he, slowly, and the name had never sounded in the
least like music before, "Dawn O'Hara. It sounds like a rose--a pink
blush rose that is deeper pink at its heart, and very sweet."

He picked up the trifle with which he had been toying and eyed it
intently for a moment, as though his whole mind were absorbed in it.
Then he put it down, turned, and walked slowly away. I sat staring after
him like a little simpleton, puzzled, bewildered, stunned. That had been
the beginning of it all.

He had what we Irish call "a way wid him." I wonder now why I did not go
mad with the joy, and the pain, and the uncertainty of it all. Never was
a girl so dazzled, so humbled, so worshiped, so neglected, so courted.
He was a creature of a thousand moods to torture one. What guise would
he wear to-day? Would he be gay, or dour, or sullen, or teasing or
passionate, or cold, or tender or scintillating? I know that my hands
were always cold, and my cheeks were always hot, those days.

He wrote like a modern Demosthenes, with all political New York to
quiver under his philippics. The managing editor used to send him out
on wonderful assignments, and they used to hold the paper for his stuff
when it was late. Sometimes he would be gone for days at a time, and
when he returned the men would look at him with a sort of admiring awe.
And the city editor would glance up from beneath his green eye-shade and
call out:

"Say, Orme, for a man who has just wired in about a million dollars'
worth o