tte in a white dress, her neck showing a faint rim
of tan above her girlish decolletage; Annette smiling rather formally
as though this conventional passage after their unconventional meeting
and acquaintance sat in embarrassment on her spirits; Annette saying in
that vibrant boyish contralto which came always as a surprise out of
her exquisite whiteness:

"How do you do, Dr. Blake--you are back in the city rather earlier than
you expected, aren't you?"

He was conscious of shock, emotional and professional--emotional that
they had not taken up their relation exactly where they left it
off--professional because of her appearance. Not only was she pale and
just a little drawn of facial line, but that indefinable look of one
"called" was on her again.

All this he gathered as he made voluble explanation--the attendance at
the sanitorium had fallen off with the approach of autumn--they really
needed no assistant to the resident physician--he thought it best to
hurry his search for an opening in New York before the winter should
set in. Then, put at his ease by his own volubility, and remembering
that it is a lover's policy to hold the advantage gained at the last
battle, he added:

"And of course you may guess another reason."

This she parried with a woman-of-the-world air, quite different from
her old childlike frankness.

"The theatrical season, I suppose. It opens earlier every year."

He pursued that line no further. She took up the reins of the
conversation and drove it along smooth but barren paths. "It's nice
that you could come to-night. Looking for a practice must make so many
calls on your time. I shouldn't have been surprised not to see you at
all this winter. No one seems able to spare much time for acquaintances
in New York."

"Not at all," he said, ruffling a little within, "I shall find plenty
of time for my _friends_ this winter." Deliberately he emphasized the
word. "I hope nothing has happened to change our--friendship. Or does
Berkeley Center seem primitive and far away?"

For the first time that quality which he was calling in his mind her
"society shell" seemed to melt away from her. She had kept her eyelids
half closed; now they opened full.

"I am living on the memory of it," she said.

Here was his opening. A thousand incoherences rushed to his lips--and
stopped there. For another change came over her. Those lids, like
curtains drawn by stealth over what must not be revealed, sank hal