did seem to be so
sentimental!

"I've bought myself lots of things," she defended herself. "Most of this
is really for me. And--I can't help being good to him. It's only common
humanity. I was never so sorry for anybody in my life--you'd be, too, if
it were Mr. De Guenther!"

She thought her explanation was complete. But she must have said
something that she did not realize, for Mrs. De Guenther only laughed
her little tinkling laugh again, and--as is the fashion of elderly
people--kissed her.

"I would, indeed, my dear," said she.

X

Allan Harrington lay in his old attitude on his couch in the darkened
day-room, his tired, clear-cut face a little thrown back, eyes
half-closed. He was not thinking of anything or any one especially;
merely wrapped in a web of the dragging, empty, gray half-thoughts of
weariness in general that had hung about him so many years. Wallis was
not there. Wallis had been with him much less lately, and he had
scarcely seen Phyllis for a fortnight; or, for the matter of that, the
dog, or any one at all. Something was going on, he supposed, but he
scarcely troubled himself to wonder what. The girl was doubtless making
herself boudoirs or something of the sort in a new part of the house. He
closed his eyes entirely, there in the dusky room, and let the web of
dreary, gray, formless thought wrap him again.

Phyllis's gay, sweetly carrying voice rang from outside the door:

"The three-thirty, then, Wallis, and I feel as if I were going to steal
Charlie Ross! Well----"

On the last word she broke off and pushed the sitting-room door softly
open and slid in. She walked in a pussy-cat fashion which would have
suggested to any one watching her a dark burden on her conscience.

She crossed straight to the couch, looked around for the chair that
should have been by it but wasn't, and sat absently down on the floor.
She liked floors.

"Allan!" she said.

No answer.

"Allan _Harrington_!"

Still none. Allan was half-asleep, or what did instead, in one of his
abstracted moods.

"_All-an Harrington!_"

This time she reached up and pulled at his heavy silk sleeve as she
spoke.

"Yes," said Allan courteously, as if from an infinite distance.

"Would you mind," asked Phyllis guilelessly, "if Wallis--we--moved
you--a little? I can tell you all about everything, unless you'd rather
not have the full details of the plan----"

"Anything," said Allan wearily from the depths of his gr