She looked into his face again, and her large eyes produced an impression of deep melancholy, which Theron found himself somehow impelled to share.  Things seemed all at once to have become very sad indeed.

“It is one of my unhappy nights,” she explained, in gloomy confidence.  “I get them every once in a while—­as if some vicious planet or other was crossing in front of my good star—­and then I’m a caution to snakes.  I shut myself up—­that’s the only thing to do—­and have it out with myself I didn’t know but the organ-music would calm me down, but it hasn’t.  I shan’t sleep a wink tonight, but just rage around from one room to another, piling all the cushions from the divans on to the floor, and then kicking them away again.  Do you ever have fits like that?”

Theron was able to reply with a good conscience in the negative.  It occurred to him to add, with jocose intent:  “I am curious to know, do these fits, as you call them, occupy a prominent part in Grecian philosophy as a general rule?”

Celia gave a little snort, which might have signified amusement, but did not speak until they were upon her own sidewalk.  “There is my brother, waiting at the gate,” she said then, briefly.

“Well, then, I will bid you good-night here, I think,” Theron remarked, coming to a halt, and offering his hand.  “It must be getting very late, and my—­that is—­I have to be up particularly early tomorrow.  So good-night; I hope you will be feeling ever so much better in spirits in the morning.”

“Oh, that doesn’t matter,” replied the girl, listlessly.  “It’s a very paltry little affair, this life of ours, at the best of it.  Luckily it’s soon done with—­like a bad dream.”

“Tut!  Tut!  I won’t have you talk like that!” interrupted Theron, with a swift and smart assumption of authority.  “Such talk isn’t sensible, and it isn’t good.  I have no patience with it!”

“Well, try and have a little patience with me, anyway, just for tonight,” said Celia, taking the reproof with gentlest humility, rather to her censor’s surprise.  “I really am unhappy tonight, Mr. Ware, very unhappy.  It seems as if all at once the world had swelled out in size a thousandfold, and that poor me had dwindled down to the merest wee little red-headed atom—­the most helpless and forlorn and lonesome of atoms at that.”  She seemed to force a sorrowful smile on her face as she added:  “But all the same it has done me good to be with you—­I am sure it has—­and I daresay that by tomorrow I shall be quite out of the blues.  Good-night, Mr. Ware.  Forgive my making such an exhibition of myself I was going to be such a fine early Greek, you know, and I have turned out only a late Milesian—­quite of the decadence.  I shall do better next time.  And good-night again, and ever so many thanks.”