“Well, isn’t love the most important thing,—­to women?” asked Phebe, sitting down on the floor to nurse the fire, her thin muslin making a little ripple of pretty lightness around her.

“No, it isn’t,” replied Gerald.  “It may be to some few perhaps, but certainly not to all women.  It isn’t to me.  It’s one thing; not every thing; and not even the best thing.  Knowledge is better, and goodness is better, and to come down to purely personal blessings, health is better, and so is common-sense better, and in the long run there are dozens of things infinitely better worth having and better worth aiming for.  It’s a good enough thing to have in addition, but as to its being the sum and substance, the Alpha and Omega, of any sensible woman’s life, that’s all foolishness.  Let’s have done with it and order in the lights.  I want to get at Euclid again.  It will never do for that conceited Yale brother of mine to get ahead of me.  Shall I call to Nancy?”

“No use.  The servants are out.  Wait a moment till the fire is well started, and I’ll bring in the lamp.”

“The servants are out?” repeated Gerald.  “Both?  At the same time?  Is that the way you keep house in Joppa?”

“Oh, they like running out together, and we never want any thing in the evenings, you know.  The front door always stands ajar, and visitors let themselves in.”

“And you make your own fires and bring in your own oily lamps; or do your evening guests assist you perhaps in lieu of the servants?”

“But we don’t generally have fires,” laughed Phebe, greatly amused at Gerald’s disgust.  “Only to-night it would be too chilly for Aunt Lydia here without one.  I feel cool too.  I was not so sensible as you, and put on too thin a dress.  Isn’t it a pretty blaze?  Wait just till I throw on another log.  How it snaps and crackles!”

“Take your time,” said Gerald, turning back to the window.  “But what a way to manage!  Why should you hire servants, if you do their work for them?”

Phebe only laughed, and a little shower of sparks flew over her from the hearth as if the fire laughed too.

“It’s being needlessly indulgent,” pursued Gerald.  “One can give servants proper liberties without making one’s self a slave to their caprices.  If you yield to them in one instance because it chances to be convenient, they’ll certainly exact it of you another time when it is not convenient.  Gracious heavens!  Phebe, what is it?”

There was a sudden outburst of light behind her, and a sharp scream of mingled terror and pain, and she turned to find Phebe standing the centre of a pillar of fire.  Her light dress had ignited from the flying sparks, and the devouring flames seemed to burst forth in a hundred places at once and rush exultantly together.  Phebe gave another wild cry and started for the door in that blind agony of despair which seems to hasten people at such times to their doom, as if by aimless flight they could escape the awful demon