e you ever felt that way about people?"

"Yes," she admitted, and poked the toe of her boot with her parasol.

"And then I find you in this house, which has so many associations for
me. Harmoniously here," he added, "if you know what I mean. Not a
newcomer, but some one who must always have been logically expected."

She glanced at him quickly, with parted lips. It was she who had done
most of the talking at Mrs. Grainger's dinner; and the imaginative
quality of mind he was now revealing was unlooked for. She was surprised
not to find it out of character. It is a little difficult to know what
she expected of him, since she did not know herself the methods, perhaps;
of the Viking in Longfellow's poem. She was aware, at least, that she had
attracted him, and she was beginning to realize it was not a thing that
could be done lightly. This gave her a little flutter of fear.

"Are you going to be long in Newport?" she asked.

"I am leaving on Friday," he replied. "It seems strange to be here again
after so many years. I find I've got out of touch with it. And I haven't
a boat, although Farnham's been kind enough to offer me his."

"I can't imagine you, somehow, without a boat," she said, and added
hastily: "Mrs. Shorter was speaking of you this morning, and said that
you were always on the water when you were here. Newport must have been
quite different then."

He accepted the topic, and during the remainder of his visit she
succeeded in keeping the conversation in the middle ground, although she
had a sense of the ultimate futility of the effort; a sense of pressure
being exerted, no matter what she said. She presently discovered,
however, that the taste for literature attributed to him which had seemed
so incongruous--existed. He spoke with a new fire when she led him that
way, albeit she suspected that some of the fuel was derived from the
revelation that she shared his liking for books. As the extent of his
reading became gradually disclosed, however, her feeling of inadequacy
grew, and she resolved in the future to make better use of her odd
moments. On her table, in two green volumes, was the life of a
Massachusetts statesman that Mrs. Shorter had lent her. She picked it up
after Chiltern had gone. He had praised it.

He left behind him a blurred portrait on her mind, as that of two men
superimposed. And only that morning he had had such a distinct impression
of one. It was from a consideration of this strange p