The hostess had supposed that the Mavicks would be pleased to meet the rising author, and in still further carrying out her benevolent purpose, and with, no doubt, a sympathy in the feelings of the young, Mrs. Van Cortlandt had assigned Miss Mavick to Mr. Burnett.  It was certainly a natural arrangement, and yet it called a blank look to Mrs. Mavick’s face, that Philip saw, and put her in a bad humor which needed an effort for her to conceal it from Mr. Van Cortlandt.  The dinner-party was large, and her ill-temper was not assuaged by the fact that the young people were seated at a distance from her and on the same side of the table.

“How charming your daughter is looking, Mrs. Mavick!” Mr. Van Cortlandt began, by way of being agreeable.  Mrs. Mavick inclined her head.  “That young Burnett seems to be a nice sort of chap; Mrs. Van Cortlandt says he is very clever.”

“Yes?”

“I haven’t read his book.  They say he is a lawyer.”

“Lawyer’s clerk, I believe,” said Mrs. Mavick, indifferently.

“Authors are pretty plenty nowadays.”

“That’s a fact.  Everybody writes.  I don’t see how all the poor devils live.”  Mr. Van Cortlandt had now caught the proper tone, and the conversation drifted away from personalities.

It was a very brilliant dinner, but Philip could not have given much account of it.  He made an effort to be civil to his left-hand neighbor, and he affected an ease in replying to cross-table remarks.  He fancied that he carried himself very well, and so he did for a man unexpectedly elevated to the seventh heaven, seated for two hours beside the girl whose near presence filled him with indescribable happiness.  Every look, every tone of her voice thrilled him.  How dear she was! how adorable she was!  How radiantly happy she seemed to be whenever she turned her face towards him to ask a question or to make a reply!

At moments his passion seemed so overmastering that he could hardly restrain himself from whispering, “Evelyn, I love you.”  In a hundred ways he was telling her so.  And she must understand.  She must know that this was not an affair of the moment, but that there was condensed in it all the constant devotion of months and months.

A woman, even any girl with the least social experience, would have seen this.  Was Evelyn’s sympathetic attention, her evident enjoyment in talking with him, any evidence of a personal interest, or only a young girl’s enjoyment of her new position in the world?  That she liked him he was sure.  Did she, was she beginning in any degree to return his passion?  He could not tell, for guilelessness in a woman is as impenetrable as coquetry.

Of what did they talk?  A stenographer would have made a meagre report of it, for the most significant part of this conversation of two fresh, honest natures was not in words.  One thing, however, Philip could bring away with him that was not a mere haze of delicious impressions.  She had been longing, she said, to talk to him about his story.  She told him how eagerly she had read it, and in talking about its meaning she revealed to him her inner thought more completely than she could have done in any other way, her sympathy with his mind, her interest in his work.