place—to Alice. Such being, in her opinion, the case, she longed to get the embarrassment of a first meeting between themselves over with, for, after that, she was sure, their old friendship could be renewed, and she would be in a position to further this pretty love affair between him and Alice. Very decidedly, therefore, Billy wished to meet Arkwright. Very pleased, consequently, was she when, one day, coming into the living-room at the Annex, she found the man sitting by the fire.
Arkwright was on his feet at once.
“Miss—Mrs. H—Henshaw,” he stammered
“Oh, Mr. Arkwright,” she cried, with just a shade of nervousness in her voice as she advanced, her hand outstretched. “I'm glad to see you.”
“Thank you. I wanted to see Miss Greggory,” he murmured. Then, as the unconscious rudeness of his reply dawned on him, he made matters infinitely worse by an attempted apology. “That is, I mean—I didn't mean—” he began to stammer miserably.
Some girls might have tossed the floundering man a straw in the shape of a light laugh intended to turn aside all embarrassment—but not Billy. Billy held out a frankly helping hand that was meant to set the man squarely on his feet at her side.
“Mr. Arkwright, don't, please,” she begged earnestly. “You and I don't need to beat about the bush. I am glad to see you, and I hope you're glad to see me. We're going to be the best of friends from now on, I'm sure; and some day, soon, you're going to bring Alice to see me, and we'll have some music. I left her up-stairs. She'll be down at once, I dare say—I met Rosa going up with your card. Good-by,” she finished with a bright smile, as she turned and walked rapidly from the room.
Outside, on the steps, Billy drew a long breath.
“There,” she whispered; “that's over—and well over!” The next minute she frowned vexedly. She had missed her glove. “Never mind! I sha'n't go back in there for it now, anyway,” she decided.
In the living-room, five minutes later, Alice Greggory found only a hastily scrawled note waiting for her.
“If you'll forgive the unforgivable,” she read “you'll forgive me for not being here when you come down. 'Circumstances over which I have no control have called me away.' May we let it go at that?
“M. J. ARKWRIGHT.”
As Alice Greggory's amazed, questioning eyes left the note they fell upon the long white glove on the floor by the door. Half mechanically she crossed the room and picked it up; but almost at once she dropped it with a low cry.
“Billy! He—saw—Billy!” Then a flood of understanding dyed her face scarlet as she turned and fled to the blessedly unseeing walls of her own room.
Not ten minutes later Rosa tapped at her door with a note.
“It's from Mr. Arkwright, Miss. He's downstairs.” Rosa's eyes were puzzled, and a bit startled.
“Mr. Arkwright!”
“Yes, Miss. He's come again. That is, I didn't know he'd went—but he must have, for he's come again now. He wrote something in a little book; then he tore it out and gave it to me. He said he'd wait, please, for an answer.”
“Oh, very well, Rosa.”
Miss Greggory took the note and spoke with an elaborate air of indifference that was meant to express a calm ignoring of the puzzled questioning in the other's eyes. The next moment she read this in Arkwright's peculiar scrawl:
“If you've already forgiven the unforgivable, you'll do it again, I know, and come down-stairs. Won't you, please? I want to see you.”
Miss Greggory lifted her head with a jerk. Her face was a painful red.
“Tell Mr. Arkwright I can't possibly—” She came to an abrupt pause. Her eyes had encountered Rosa's, and in Rosa's eyes the puzzled questioning was plainly fast becoming a shrewd suspicion.
There was the briefest of hesitations; then, lightly, Miss Greggory tossed the note aside.
“Tell Mr. Arkwright I'll be down at once, please,” she directed carelessly, as she turned back into the room.
But she was not down at once. She was not down until she had taken time to bathe her red eyes, powder her telltale nose, smoothe her ruffled hair, and whip herself into the calm, steady-eyed, self-controlled young woman that Arkwright finally rose to meet when she came into the room.
“I thought it was only women who were privileged to change their mind,” she began brightly; but Arkwright ignored her attempt to conventionalize the situation.
“Thank you for coming down,” he said, with a weariness that instantly drove the forced smile from the girl's lips. “I—I wanted to—to talk to you.”
“Yes?” She seated herself and motioned him to a chair near her. He took the seat, and then fell silent, his eyes out the window.
“I thought you said you—you wanted to talk, she reminded him nervously, after a minute.
“I did.” He turned with disconcerting abruptness. “Alice, I'm going to tell you a story.”
“I shall be glad to listen. People always like stories, don't they?”
“Do they?” The somber pain in Arkwright's eyes deepened. Alice Greggory did not know it, but he was thinking of another story he had once told in that same room. Billy was his listener then, while now—A little precipitately he began to speak.
“When I was a very small boy I went to visit my uncle, who, in his young days, had been quite a hunter. Before the fireplace in his library was a huge tiger skin with a particularly lifelike head. The first time I saw it I screamed, and ran and hid. I refused then even to go into the room again. My cousins urged, scolded, pleaded, and laughed at me by turns, but I was obdurate. I would not go where I could see the fearsome thing again, even though it was, as they said, 'nothing but a dead old rug!'
“Finally, one day, my uncle took a hand in the matter. By sheer will-power he forced me to go with him straight up to the dreaded creature, and stand by its side. He laid one of my shrinking hands on the beast's smooth head, and thrust the other one quite into the open red mouth with its gleaming teeth.
“'You see,' he said, 'there's absolutely nothing to fear. He can't possibly hurt you. Just as if you weren't bigger and finer and stronger in every way than that dead thing on the floor!'
“Then, when he had got me to the point where of my own free will I would walk up and touch the thing, he drew a lesson for me.
“'Now remember,' he charged me. 'Never run and hide again. Only cowards do that. Walk straight up and face the thing. Ten to one you'll find it's nothing but a dead skin masquerading as the real thing. Even if it isn't if it's alive—face it. Find a weapon and fight it. Know that you are going to conquer it and you'll conquer. Never run. Be a man. Men don't run, my boy!'”
Arkwright paused, and drew a long breath. He did not look at the girl in the opposite chair. If he had looked he would have seen a face transfigured.
“Well,” he resumed, “I never forgot that tiger skin, nor what it stood for, after that day
