o-day. He gives a great many little jumps; I keep him skipping about!
I remember perfectly the way we were sitting that evening at Baden, and
the way you looked at me when you came up. I saw you before Gordon--I
see a good many things before Gordon. What did you look at me that way
for? I always meant to ask you. I was dying to know."

"For the simplest reason in the world," said Bernard. "Because you were
so pretty."

"Ah no, it was n't that! I know all about that look. It was something
else--as if you knew something about me. I don't know what you can
have known. There was very little to know about me, except that I was
intensely silly. Really, I was awfully silly that summer at Baden--you
would n't believe how silly I was. But I don't see how you could
have known that--before you had spoken to me. It came out in
my conversation--it came out awfully. My mother was a good deal
disappointed in Mrs. Vivian's influence; she had expected so much from
it. But it was not poor Mrs. Vivian's fault, it was some one's else.
Have you ever seen the Vivians again? They are always in Europe; they
have gone to live in Paris. That evening when you came up and spoke to
Gordon, I never thought that three years afterward I should be married
to him, and I don't suppose you did either. Is that what you meant by
looking at me? Perhaps you can tell the future. I wish you would tell my
future!"

"Oh, I can tell that easily," said Bernard.

"What will happen to me?"

"Nothing particular; it will be a little dull--the perfect happiness of
a charming woman married to the best fellow in the world."

"Ah, what a horrid future!" cried Blanche, with a little petulant cry.
"I want to be happy, but I certainly don't want to be dull. If you say
that again you will make me repent of having married the best fellow in
the world. I mean to be happy, but I certainly shall not be dull if I
can help it."

"I was wrong to say that," said Bernard, "because, after all, my dear
young lady, there must be an excitement in having so kind a husband
as you have got. Gordon's devotion is quite capable of taking a new
form--of inventing a new kindness--every day in the year."

Blanche looked at him an instant, with less than her usual consciousness
of her momentary pose.

"My husband is very kind," she said gently.

She had hardly spoken the words when Gordon came in. He stopped a moment
on seeing Bernard, glanced at his wife, blushed, flushed, and with a
l