way.

When he entered the studio for the last time, it seemed in twilight, for
the shadows of a midwinter afternoon were already long. He saw that she
had set out a dainty little tea table and his heart gave a throb when he
discerned in its center, in a cut glass bowl, the violets that he had
brought her on the preceding day. They seemed to scent the room with a
definite and yet elusive fragrance, quite like her personality that was
so soon to be but a memory.

"Well, Bill Jones, Pirate, you are late," she said, as she took his hat
from his hand, while he removed his overcoat and hung it on the tiny
little cloak stand in the corner, thinking as he did so, that there it
brushed, honored, against her hanging garments.

"The obsequies of a pirate are best held in late afternoon," he replied.
"It's a time-honored form. I'm very formal, as you know."

"I suppose Mary Allen has to die, too, doesn't she? That's the way
pirate romances should end," she retorted. "I don't see why we never
hear what becomes of the pirate's lady friends. Surely any decent,
self-respecting pirate who is an honor to his profession, should have a
woman somewhere to either mourn his loss or--as I suggested--go to the
gallows and hang with him."

She turned to shift the tiny brass tea kettle that was beginning to
steam in the little grate, and, fascinated by her grace, he forgot to
speak. He thought he should always remember the firelight on her
profile--there in the shadows of the room.

"Remember the time we had tea together in that funny little inn out on
Long Island?" she asked, and then, before he could answer, laughed,
gently, and added, as if pleased by the reminiscence--"and the car broke
down on the way home, and we had to walk three miles to get another? And
then we were so hot and thirsty that we stopped in the inn and had
beer--plain, frothy beer--while the chauffeur was trying to start his
old contraption into life. Um-mh! That seems a dreadfully long time
ago."

"It does! It does!" he assented glumly, and fell to staring into the
fire as if therein he could bring it all back to vision. "We agreed,
then, that some day when summer came again, we'd do it all over. And
now--there will be no more summers!"

Unconsciously he had betrayed himself in a despair of voice and twitch
of movement.

"Are--are you sorry?" she asked, softly. "Are you sorry that Bill Jones
and Mary Allen are finished?"

All his previous resolutions were forg