e had meant to arouse there. The
man was feeling sorry for her again....

"Miss Heth, I consider them homicidal. I'm sorrier than I can say to--to
worry you with all this now. Some day if you could give me--"

"You mustn't say these things to me," said Carlisle, feeling her anger
to be real enough now. "I won't permit them. And--"

"You don't imagine that I say them for pleasure," the tall doctor
interrupted hurriedly. "I'm compelled to speak the truth, however
disagreeable--"

"Indeed? I've not noticed that you feel bound by any necessity that
way."

To that he made no reply at all. But she saw, by the look he wore, that
he was doing his best to convict her once again of having said something
unfair and rather cheap and horrid....

Turning from him, she delivered the coup de grace, in a voice not quite
so firm as she would have wished:

"I don't wish to talk to you any more. You must not speak to me
again...."

And she added at once, to a more congenial audience: "Oh!"

"Oh, oh! Cally!" whispered Mattie Allen, turning simultaneously, and for
the first time, from Mr. Canning.

And Mr. Canning said: "Ah!--what's happened?..."

In almost the same moment all three had become aware that the rattle of
talk and laughter outside the little room had entirely died away. There
had fallen upon the house of gaiety a strange silence, in which a
pin-fall might almost have been heard, and the slow speaking of a single
voice, the length of the house away, was heard most distinctly.

To neither of the two girls was this proceeding a mystery. They were
familiar with the New Year's Eve rites, and Mattie, after a number of
pretty _Sh-h-h_ gestures, whispered the explanation to Mr. Canning:

"They're reading out the Old Year. We must all go see it. It's so
cunning and quaint...."

So conversation of all sorts was summarily suspended. Even whispers
sounded loud in the sudden hush. The four young people moved toward the
door. For a moment they had almost the air of a company of friends.
Young Dr. Vivian, who was nobody's friend, stood back for Miss Heth to
pass out; but, seeing that she lingered beside her gallant, he turned
again silently after Miss Allen, who beckoned to him _sh-h_ingly, whose
property he seemed mysteriously to have become....

The alien passed out of sight, limping. If his only party that year had
gone rather badly with him, it was not less so with another. Behind him
in the firelit den, Carlisle looked