He opened the door of Nina’s room, and went in, and knocked on the half-open door within that connected it with Harriet’s room.

“Come in.  Is it you, Pilgrim?” the pleasant, quiet voice said.  Richard stepped to the doorway.

Harriet, seated in a square basket chair, under the soft flood of light from a basket-shaded lamp, rose precipitately, and stood looking at him with widened eyes and parted lips, without speaking.  She was plainly frightened, though she made herself smile.  She wore a scant, long-sleeved garment of a deep, oriental blue, that covered her from her white throat to her feet, and yet that was obviously only for bedroom wear, and to which she gave a quick, apologetic glance, as the man came in.  He noticed that in this mellow light her blue eyes seemed to communicate a blue shadow to their neighbourhood, brows and lids, and the clean arch in which they were set, all wore the same shadowy blueness.  The beautiful room was full of shadows; at the wide-open windows thin curtains stirred in the cool night air.

“Frighten you?” Richard said.

“Is there something—?” Her eyes were those of a deer that is afraid to turn.

“Why, I wanted to suggest that we tell our little piece of news to the family,” Richard suggested, after a momentary search for a suitable subject.  “I came very close to telling my mother, just now.  Is there any good reason for further delay?”

“Why, no, I don’t—­I don’t suppose there is!” Harriet stammered.

“You see, my mother had left me in no doubt of her intentions with Mrs. Tabor,” Richard said, smiling.  “I’ll give Mrs. Tabor credit for being as innocent as I am in the matter,” he added, simply.  “But there’s a plan for a Montreal trip—­I believe Ida arrives for a week to-morrow, and so on.  I should be very glad to let the world know that—­my arrangements—­in the line, are already made.  It will be fairer to you, too, I think.  Gardiner asked me last night if the coast was clear—­Ward asked me if I thought there was any use in his trying again—­”

“There will be talk,” said Harriet with distaste, as he paused.

“I suppose so,” he answered, simply.  “But what we do is our own affair, after all.  I shall explain to my mother that for us both it seemed a practical and a—­well, not unpleasant solution.  There need be no change here, but you will simply have a more assured position—­”

She had been watching him, with all June in her face.  But as he went on the colour slowly drained away, and about her beautiful eyes a look of strain and even of something like shame gradually deepened.  When she spoke, it was as if the muscles of her throat were constricted.

“Yes, I see.  Certainly, I see.  We will have to let them talk.  This is—­simply the best arrangement possible under the circumstances!”

“It is an arrangement that a man perhaps has no right to ask of a woman,” Richard said.  “Love means a great deal in a girl’s life, and I suppose there is nothing else that makes up for the lack of it.  But you are not an ordinary woman, and I assure you that in every way that I can I mean to prove to you how deeply I appreciate what you are doing for us all.”