Gila pouted.  She did not want to play, but she would not seem to refuse the challenge.  She went to the piano and rippled off a brilliant waltz or two, just to show him she could do it, played Humoresque, and a few little catchy melodies that were in the popular ear just then, and then, whirling on the gilded stool, she lifted her big eyes to him: 

“I don’t like it in here,” she said, with a little shiver, as a child might do; “let’s go into the library by the fire.  It’s pleasanter there to talk.”

Courtland hesitated.  “Look here,” said he, frankly, “Wouldn’t you just as soon sit somewhere else?  I don’t like that red light of yours.  It gets on my nerves.  I don’t like to see you in it.  It makes you look—­well—­something different from what I believe you really are.  I like a plain, honest white light.”

Gila gave him one swift, wondering glance and walked laughingly over to the library door.  “Oh, is that all?” she said, and, touching a button, she switched off the big red table-lamp and switched on what seemed like a thousand little tapers concealed softly about the ceiling.

“There!” she cried, half mockingly.  “You can have as much light as you like, and when you get tired of that we can cut them all off and sit in the firelight.”  She touched another button and let him see the room in the soft dim shadows and rich glow of the fire.  Then she turned the full light on again and entered the room, dropping into one big leather chair at the side of the fireplace and indicating another big chair on the opposite side.  She had no notion of sitting near him or of luring him to her side to-night.  She had read him aright.  Hers was the demure part to play, the reserved, shy maiden, the innocent, child-like, womanly woman.  She would play it, but she would humble him!  So she had vowed with her little white teeth set in her red lips as she stood before her dressing-table mirror that night when he had fled from her red room and her.

Well pleased, with a sigh of relief he dropped into the chair and sat watching her, talking idly, as one who is feeling his way to a pleasant intimacy of whose nature he is not quite sure.  She was very sweet and sympathetic about the examinations, told how she hated them herself and thought they ought to be abolished; said he was a wonder, that her cousin had told her he was a regular shark, and yet he hadn’t let himself be spoiled by it, either.  She flattered him gently with that deference a girl can pay to a man which makes her appear like an angel of light, and fixes him for any confidence in the world he has to give.  She sat so quietly, with big eyes lifted now and then, talking earnestly and appreciatively of fine and noble things, that all his best thoughts about her were confirmed.  He watched her, thinking what a lovely, lovable woman she was, what gentle sympathy and keen appreciation of really fine qualities she showed, child even though she seemed to be!