“I don’t know but I shall read that book after all,” said Von Rosen.  “I rather liked that extract she gave us.  It struck me as out of the common run of women’s books.  I beg your pardon, Miss Eustace.  If you were a writer yourself I could not speak so, but you are not, and you must know as well as I do, that many of the books written by women are simply sloughs of oversweetened sentiment, and of entirely innocent immorality.  But that chapter did not sound as if it could belong to such a book.  It sounded altogether too logical for the average woman writer.  I think I will read it.  Then after I have read it, you will not refuse to discuss it with me, will you?”

“I do not think so,” replied Annie tremulously.  Would he never talk of anything except that book?  To her relief he did, to her relief and scarcely acknowledged delight.

“Are you interested in curios, things from Egyptian tombs, for instance?” he inquired with brutal masculine disregard of sequence.

Annie was bewildered, but she managed to reply that she thought she might be.  She had heard of Von Rosen’s very interesting collection.

“I happened to meet your aunt, Miss Harriet, this afternoon,” said Von Rosen, “and I inquired if she were by any chance interested and she said she was.”

“Yes,” said Annie.  She had never before dreamed that her Aunt Harriet was in the least interested in Egyptian tombs.

“I ventured to ask if she and her sister, Miss Susan, and you also, if you cared to see it, would come some afternoon and look at my collection,” said Von Rosen.

Nobody could have dreamed from his casual tone how carefully he had planned it all out:  the visit of Annie and her aunts, the delicate little tea served in the study, the possible little stroll with Annie in his garden.  Von Rosen knew that one of the aunts, Miss Harriet, was afflicted with rose cold, and therefore, would probably not accept his invitation to view his rose-garden, and he also knew that it was improbable that both sisters would leave their aged mother.  It was, of course, a toss-up as to whether Miss Harriet or Miss Susan would come.  It was also a toss-up as to whether or not they might both come, and leave little Annie as companion for the old lady.  In fact, he had to admit to himself that the latter contingency was the more probable.  He was well accustomed to being appropriated by elder ladies, with the evident understanding that he preferred them.  He would simply have to make the best of it and show his collection as gracefully as possible and leave out the rose-garden and the delicious little tete-a-tete with this young rose of a girl and think of something else.  For Karl von Rosen in these days was accustoming himself to a strange visage in his own mental looking-glass.  He had not altered his attitude toward women but toward one woman, and that one was now sauntering beside him in the summer moonlight, her fluffy white garments now and then