ited until she saw him glance
up from the opening paragraph to the watch-fob lying on the stand at his
elbow. Then he looked back at the page, with a slight show of interest,
and she knew that the reference to Mars' month and the bloodstone had
caught his attention as it had hers. Then she left him alone with it,
hoping fervently it would arouse in him at least a tithe of the interest
it had awakened in her.

When she came back after awhile he merely handed her the book, saying
in an indifferent way, "A very pretty little tale, Mary," and leaned
back in his chair with closed eyes, as if dismissing it from his
thoughts. She was disappointed, but later she saw him sitting with it in
his hand again, closed over one finger as if to keep the place, while he
looked out of the window with a faraway expression in his eyes. Later
the nurse asked her what book it was he kept under his pillow. He drew
it out occasionally, she said, and glanced at one of the pages as if he
were trying to memorize it.

That he had at last read it as she read it, putting himself in the place
of Aldebaran, Mary knew one day from an unconscious reference he made to
it. A sudden wind had blown up, scattering papers and magazines across
the room, and fluttering his curtains like flags. She ran in to pick up
the wind-blown articles and close the shutters. When everything was in
order, as she thought, she turned to go out, but he stopped her, saying
almost fretfully, "You haven't picked up that picture that blew down."
When she glanced all around the room, unable to discover it, he pointed
to the hearth. A photograph had fallen from the mantel, face downward.

"There! _Vesta's_ picture!"

Mary picked it up and turned it over, exclaiming, "Why, no, it is
Betty's!"

"That's what I said," he answered, wholly unconscious of his slip of the
tongue that had betrayed his secret. Her back was turned towards him, so
that he could not see the tears which sprang to her eyes. If already it
had come to this, that Betty was the Vesta of his dreams, then his
renunciation must be an hundredfold harder than she had imagined.

With a pity so deep that she could not trust herself to speak, she
busied herself in blowing some specks of dust from the mantel, as an
excuse to keep her back turned. She was relieved when the nurse came in
with a glass of lemonade and she could slip out without his seeing her
face. She sat down on the back steps, her arms around her knees to t