likeable--always."

Involuntarily the man turned away, until his face was hidden.

"You believe this, and still--you don't give advice or--or warning?"

"I repeat, I believe in you. Even if it weren't an insult advice would
not be necessary."

A last second they stood there, so near, so very near together and still
so infinitely far apart. Dully, almost ploddingly, the man turned to
leave.

"Thank you, Elice," he said. "That's probably the last kind word I'll
hear for a long time. Perhaps, too, it's justified, perhaps--who knows?
Good-night and--good-bye."

The girl did not follow him, did not move.

"Good-bye, Steve," she echoed.

BOOK II

CHAPTER I

ANTICIPATION

"Are you given to remembering dates, Elice?"

There had been a pause,--one of the inevitable, normal pauses that occur
when two people who are intimate are alone and conversation drifts where
it will. Into this particular void, without preamble, entered this
question.

"Sometimes. Why?"

"Not always, then?"

"No. I haven't any particular tendency that way that I know of. Possibly
I'm not yet old enough for it to develop."

"To be more specific, then, to-day is December the sixth." Darley
Roberts' eyelids narrowed whimsically. "Does that particular date have
any special significance, recall anything out of the ordinary to you?"

Elice Gleason glanced up from the four-leafed clover she was bringing to
life on the scrap of linen in her lap, and looked at her companion
thoughtfully.

"From the way you come at me, point blank," she smiled, "I have no doubt
it should. Your chance questions, I've discovered, always do have a
string attached to them somewhere. But just at this particular moment I
admit December the sixth recalls nothing in particular."

"Not even when I add, at approximately eight o'clock in the evening? It's
that now. I've been consulting the timepiece over there."

"No; not even that. I'm more and more convinced it's a distinct lapse on
my part; but again I'm compelled to confess incompetency. When did what
happen at approximately eight P.M. on December the sixth?"

Darley Roberts stroked his great chin with reminiscent deliberation.

"On December sixth, at eight o'clock P.M., precisely one year ago," he
explained minutely, "a certain man called on a certain young woman of his
acquaintance for the first time. It was, I am reliably informed, a
momentous occasion for him. Moreover he--Had you really forgotten,
E