the library and found the control of the lights. She
came hurrying in after him.

"It's chilly. The furnace seems to be off," she said. "I'll----" But
instead of declaring her intentions, she enacted them; taking a match
from a little white porcelain trough on the mantelpiece and striking it
on the heel of her glittering shoe. Then she knelt before the grate and
set the flame to paper beneath the kindling-wood and coal. "You mustn't
freeze," she said, with a thoughtful kindness that killed him; and as
she went out of the room he died again;--for she looked back over her
shoulder.

She had pushed up her veils and this was his first sight of that
disastrous face in long empty weeks and weeks. Now he realized that all
his aching reveries upon its contours had shown but pallid likenesses;
for here was the worst thing about Julia's looks;--even her most
extravagant suitor, in absence, could not dream an image of her so
charming as he found herself when he saw her again. Thus, seeing Julia
again was always a discovery. And this glance over her shoulder as she
left a room--not a honeyed glance but rather inscrutable, yet implying
that she thought of the occupant, and might continue to think of him
while gone from him--this was one of those ways of hers that experience
could never drill out of her.

"I'm Robinson Crusoe, Noble," she said, when she came back. "I suppose I
might as well take off my furs, though." But first she unfastened the
great bouquet she wore and tossed it upon a table. Noble was standing
close to the table, and he moved away from it hurriedly--a revulsion
that she failed to notice. She went on to explain, as she dropped her
cloak and stole upon a chair: "Papa's gone away for at least a week.
He's taken his ulster. It doesn't make any difference what the weather
is, but when he's going away for a week or longer, he always takes it
with him, except in summer. If he's only going to be gone two or three
days he takes his short overcoat. And unless I'm here when he leaves
town he always gives the servants a holiday till he gets back; so
they've gone and even taken Gamin with 'em, and I'm all alone in the
house. I can't get even Kitty Silver back until to-morrow, and then I'll
probably have to hunt from house to house among her relatives. Papa left
yesterday, because the numbers on his desk calender are pulled off up
to to-day, and that's the first thing he does when he comes down for
breakfast. So here I am,