She placed her own chair by the table, Peter’s not far from it.  She meant to produce a great effect on this man to-night, to change the whole current of his life, without having the help of either love or even friendship.  Unconsciously she planned to bring him close to her, though very likely she had never heard of personal magnetism, or any of the curious secrets political speakers or actors or revivalists could have told her of the deadening effects of distance and empty benches.

Then Kitty, in her room overhead, looked at herself in the glass, arrayed in a soft cashmere, in color blue, still farther toned down, by certain softer fringes and loops, into the very ideal garb for a man’s type of “yielding, lovely woman.”  It was one of the sacred wedding-dresses.

“Maria could never look like this,” tying a lace handkerchief about her neck, pulling the soft rings of hair looser about her ears, setting her head on one side, and half shutting her eyes to see the thick and curly lashes.

There was no danger of interruption.  Maria was safely lodged in the Water-cure House, and the very idea of Mr. Muller’s glossy black shoes and dainty brown umbrella venturing out in the rain made Kitty laugh.

“The dear, good soul is finical as a cat,” with the good-natured indulgence of a mother for a child.  Suddenly she stopped, stared at herself in the glass.  “Why, he is my husband!” she said, speaking to the blushing, blue-robed figure as to another person.  Then she hastily unbuttoned, unlooped the pretty dress, threw it off, putting on her usual gray wrapper and knotting her hair more tightly back than ever in a comb.  “He has been very good to me—­very good to me,” her chin trembling a good deal.

Then she went down to meet Doctor McCall, who that moment came into the Book-shop, stopping at the door to take off and shake his oilskin coat.

“It is a wet night,” she said, just as though he were a stranger.  She did not know what else to say or what he answered as she went about, trimming the lamp, dragging out a chair for him, closing the window curtains.  Both McCall and Catharine were ordinary people, accustomed to keep up a good flow of talk on ordinary subjects, the weather or any joke or gossip that was nearest to them.  There had been no passages of love or hate between them to account for her forced formality, her trembling and flushing, and urgent almost angry wish to remind him that she was Mr. Muller’s affianced wife.  She felt this with a new contempt for herself.

As for Doctor McCall, he leaned comfortably back in his arm-chair and dried his legs at the grate filled with red-hot coals, while he listened to the soft rustle of her skirts as she moved noiselessly about him.  It is the peculiarity of women like Kitty, to whom Nature has denied the governing power of ideas or great personal beauty or magnetism, such as she gave to Miss Muller, that there is a certain impalpable