on?"

"No! I promised to meet Jim round about eleven-thirty."

"Jim!" she repeated. "You and Jim seem to be thick as sweethearts."

"Thicker!" responded Phil, "because we never fall out."

"Do sweethearts fall out so often?"

"I fancy so, from what I hear."

"Then you think two men can be greater friends than a man and a woman
can?"

"Greater friends,--truer friends,--more sincere friends and
faithful,--yes!"

Eileen's hold on Phil's arm loosened.

"What makes you think so?" she asked.

"Well,--with men it is purely and simply a wholehearted attraction of
congenial tastes and manly virtues or evil propensities, as the case
may be. There is no question of sex coming between. When that enters
into the reckoning, everything else goes by the board. Not that I
infer that man and woman cannot be true friends and fast friends, but
everything has to take second place to that question of sex."

Eileen did not answer.

"Don't you agree?" asked Phil with a smile.

"No,--I do not, but I don't feel that I can argue the point."

They were silent once more. Then again Eileen broke into the quiet.

"Oh, dear!--I almost forgot. I wonder, Mr. Ralston, if you would care
to come to our place the week after next. Daddy, you know, has bought
Baron DeDillier's house on the hill, and we are going to have a
house-warming and a big social time for all daddy's friends. Would you
care to come if I send you an invitation? Jim will be there. He seldom
gets left out of anything, pleasant or otherwise."

Phil was not so very sure of himself, and he would have preferred
rather to have been omitted, but he could not, in good grace, decline
such an invitation.

"Why, certainly!" he replied. "It will give me the greatest of
pleasure."

"Good! We shall have a nice dance together to make up for the one we
missed to-night,--and a talk. Maybe that night I shall be in better
frame of mind for meeting your arguments on the relations of sex and
friendship."

Phil laughed in his own peculiar way.

Eileen Pederstone stopped up with a start and looked at him with half
frightened eyes, as if endeavouring to recall a bad dream yet half
afraid lest it should return to her.

Phil knew that an echo had touched her memory from that laugh.

He was about to speak of something else, to take away her thoughts,
when a shadow crept up to Phil's side and a hand pulled at his coat
sleeve.

He turned quickly and caught at the hand. He pulled its own