u remember
seeing me? I never was a nurse."

"What--are you?" he asked feebly.

"I'm--why, the children call me the Liberry Teacher," she answered. It
occurred to her that it would be better to talk on brightly at random
than to risk speaking of his mother to him, as she must if she reminded
him of their marriage. "I spend my days in a basement, making bad little
boys get so interested in the Higher Culture that they'll forget to
shoot crap and smash windows."

One of the things which had aided Phyllis to rise from desk-assistant to
one of the Children's Room librarians was a very sweet and carrying
voice--a voice which arrested even a child's attention, and held his
interest. It held Allan now; merely the sound of it, seemingly.

"Go on--talking," he murmured. Phyllis smiled and obeyed.

"Sometimes the Higher Culture doesn't work," she said. "Yesterday one of
my imps got hold of a volume of Shaw, and in half an hour his aunt
marched in on me and threatened I don't know what to a library that
'taught chilren to disrespect their lawful guardeens.'"

"I remember now," said Allan. "You are the girl in the blue dress. The
girl mother had me marry. I remember."

"Yes," said Phyllis soothingly, and a little apologetically. "I know.
But that--oh, please, it needn't make a bit of difference. It was only
so I could see that you were looked after properly, you know. I'll never
be in the way, unless you want me to do something for you."

"I don't mind," he said listlessly, as he had before.... "_Oh, this
dreadful darkness, and mother dead in it somewhere!_"

"Wallis," called Phyllis swiftly, "turn up the lights!"

The man slipped the close green silk shades from the electric bulbs.
Allan shrank as if he had been hurt.

"I can't stand the glare," he cried.

"Yes, you can for a moment," she said firmly. "It's better than the
ghastly green glow."

It was probably the first time Allan Harrington had been contradicted
since his accident. He said nothing more for a minute, and Phyllis
directed Wallis to bring a sheet of pink tissue paper from her
suit-case, where she remembered it lay in the folds of some new muslin
thing. Under her direction still, he wrapped the globes in it and
secured it with string.

"There!" she told Allan triumphantly when Wallis was done. "See, there
is no glare now; only a pretty rose-colored glow. Better than the green,
isn't it?"

Allan looked at her again. "You are--kind," he said. "Mother