r a good many bearings were made in the factory
last year--and lost in the river--"

"Oh, there's some mistake," said Mary earnestly. "Perhaps the factory
didn't make as many bearings as you think."

Again he gave her his astronomical smile, as though she were saying now,
"Perhaps the moon isn't as round as you think it is; it doesn't always
look round to me."

"I thought it best to show you this, confidentially," he said, gathering
the papers together, "because we have lately become conscious of a
feeling of opposition--in trying to trace the source of this discrepancy.
It seems to us," he suggested, speaking always in his impersonal manner,
"that this is a point which needs clearing up--for the benefit of every
one concerned."

"Yes," said Mary after a pause "Of course you must do that. It isn't
right to raise suspicions and then not clear them up.... Besides," she
added, "I know that you'll find it's just a mistake somewhere--"

After he had gone, Helen looked in, Burdon standing behind her, holding
his cane horizontally, one hand near the handle, the other near the
ferrule. In the half gloom of the hall he looked more dashing--more
reckless--than Mary had ever visioned him. His cane might have been a
sword ... his hat three-cornered with a sable feather in it....

"I just looked in to say good-bye," said Helen. "I'm going to take Burdon
home."

"I need somebody to mind me," said Burdon, flashing Mary one of his
violent smiles; and turning to go he said to Helen over his shoulder,
"Come, child. We're late."

"He calls her 'child'..." thought Mary.

That night Wally was a visitor at the house on the hill--and when Mary
saw how subdued he was--how chastened he looked--her heart went out to
him.

"It seems so good to be here, calling again like this," he said. "Does it
remind you of old times, the same as it does me?"

But Mary wouldn't follow him there. As they talked it occurred to her
more than once that while Wally appeared to be listening to her, his
thoughts were elsewhere--his ears attuned for other sounds.

"What are you listening for!" she asked him once.

He answered her with a puzzle.

"For the Lorelei's song," he said, and going to the piano he sang it, his
clear, plaintive tenor still retaining its power to make her nose smart
and the dumb chills to run up and down her back. She was sitting near the
piano and when he was through, he turned around on the bench.

"Have you ever been the lea