brought ease to all his senses. He had not expected to find so pleasant a house; verily, the marks of philistinism were not upon it. It seemed to him unlikely that Porter maintained solitary state here, and he wondered who could be the other members of the household. The maid had disappeared into the silent depths of the house without waiting for his name, and did not return. His eyes moved again in leisurely fashion to the wall before him, and to the mirror, which reflected nothing of his immediate surroundings, but disclosed the shelves and books of a room on the opposite side of the hall.

He was amusing himself in speculations as to what manner of library a man like Porter would have, and whether he read anything but the newspapers, when the shadow of a young woman crept into the mirror; she stood placing flowers in a vase on a table in the center of the room. He thought for a moment that a figure from a painting had given a pretty head and a pair of graceful shoulders to the mirror. In the room where he sat the frames contained peasants in sabots, generous panels of Hudson River landscape, a Detaille and an Inness. He changed the direction of his eyes to inspect again the Brittany girl that stood looking out over the sea in the manner of Brittany girls in pictures. The girl in the mirror was not the same; moreover, he could hear her humming softly; her head moved gracefully;[Pg 27] there was no question of her reality. Her hands had brought a bunch of sweet peas within the mirror's compass, and were detaching a part of them for the vase by which she stood. She hummed on in her absorption, bending again, so that Saxton lost sight of her; then she stood upright, holding the unused flowers as if uncertain what to do with them. The head flashed out of the mirror, which reflected again only the library shelves and books. Then he heard a light step crossing the hall, and the girl, still singing softly to herself, passed back of him to a little stand which stood by one of the drawing-room windows. The back of the wicker chair hid him; she was wholly unconscious that any one was there. The breath of the sweet peas which she was distributing suddenly sweetened the cool air of the room. Seeing that the girl did not know of his presence in the house, and that she would certainly discover him when she turned to go, he rose and faced her.

[Pg 27]

"I beg your pardon!"

"Oh!" The sweet peas fell to the floor, and the girl looked anxiously toward the hall door.

"I beg your pardon," Saxton repeated. "I think—I fear—I wasn't 

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