"Perhaps." She appeared to waver. "You must admit," he continued, perversely pursuing the subject, "that you are rather mysterious yourself. Why, you appeared so suddenly and noiselessly beside me at the opera the other night—" "My mother was to meet me there," she interrupted him, "but she disappointed me." "And then as suddenly and noiselessly you disappeared, that truly, if I had not found the buckle of your shoe, I should never afterward have been successful in assuring myself that you had really been there." She looked at him now with a sparkle of amusement in her eyes, and he experienced a [Pg 31]quick sense of delight that violet eyes could be merry. [Pg 31] "Perhaps I was not really there at all," she laughed. It was evident that she had thrown aside the distrust and distress of a few moments before. "Listen"—leaning forward and speaking with more animation and assurance than she had yet shown—"I will construct a romance for you, a romance of mystery, since you seem determined to have mystery. Can you not fancy a woman, young, eager, interested in all sorts of things, and shut off from them all, living somewhere in the depths of the woods and consumed with longing for the intense and changing life of the city, whose varied phases only seem the more vivid and interesting when heightened by distance; and she dreams of this—this lonely girl—until her longing becomes so great and so vast and overmastering that her thought goes slipping away—away from the gloomy woods to enjoy stolen, brief, bright glimpses of the world? Is that beyond your imagination?" [Pg 32] [Pg 32] "It is not at all beyond my imagination," he said modestly, "but if you are trying to impress upon me the fact that you are no more real than my fancy has once or twice suggested, it brings up a nice moral question. Am I justified in handing over to a chilly ghost a valuable and beautiful ornament belonging to some one else?" She laughed outright, frankly amused. "That is a question you will have to decide for yourself," she said demurely. "You can't expect me to help you." "Very well," he replied with equal promptitude. "I refuse any further responsibility and leave it entirely to your conscience." "Are you—do you
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