and would have something to say to her which a man may worthily say to a woman.  He had so thoroughly understood her edict that his coming could have no other meaning.  She could not know that he was still actuated solely by his own selfish craving for comfort, nor that he had occupied his time on the train countering and balancing considerations until his sudden determination had oozed miserably out of him.  Although he could no longer awaken a throbbing of his pulses with the thought of Loraine Haswell, neither could he fortify his mind to cut the tie and give her up.

When the curtain rang down on the last act the door-man brought in his card, and Marcia ran light-heartedly out to meet him.

“You see, I disobeyed you,” he announced, and she sought to reply with great severity, but delight broke through that affectation and riddled it with smiles.

“Unless you are too tired,” she suggested, “let’s take a walk before we go back to that desolate morgue they call a hotel.”

It was a cold and sparkling night and the old street, which was once a post road, twisted between the elms under a moon that threw the rambling houses into softened shapes and underscored them duskily with shadow.  They had walked perhaps a half-mile when they came upon a building that had in its more prosperous years been a mansion of some pretense and dignity.  It sat back in its generous yard, with a cheery light blazing at its lower windows, wearing an aspect of elderly and beneficent reminiscence.  An electric bulb by the gate lighted a small swinging sign inscribed in antique type, “The Sign of the Tea-pot.  Lunch, tea and dancing.”

“Down-at-the-heels gentility gone into trade,” smiled Marcia.

Paul Burton halted and listened, but the dancing had ended and the old house was silent.

“I wonder,” he ventured, “if the tea-pot is still on duty.”

“By this time,” she laughed, “it would have tucked its head under its wing and gone to roost.”

“Let’s try it, none the less,” he challenged, and with the spirit of two children on a lark they opened the creaking gate and traversed the brick walk, arm in arm.

In answer to their knock, which echoed through the place, there came after a time a pleasant-faced elderly woman to the door.  For a few moments she reflected, then decided that, although it was a little late, she would undertake to produce some sort of a supper—­if they would make allowances for its deficient quality.

The scene seemed set for adventure, even romance.  In a large, pleasantly furnished room glowed a cheery fire, and as they waited they sat before it, falling silent, and Marcia’s face continued to smile.  She had learned to make the most of a pleasant moment while it lasted and to leave regrets until they forced themselves.

When they had finished an excellent supper and the woman had withdrawn they asked and received permission to linger a while before the inviting hearth.