Athalie

"I will come, Athalie! I want to," he said impetuously. "You're

more interesting,--a lot jollier,--than any girl I know. I always

suspected it, too--the bigger fool I to lose all that time we might

have had together--"

She, surprised for a moment, lifted her pretty head and laughed

outright, checking his somewhat impulsive monologue. And he looked at

her, disturbed.

"I'm only laughing because you speak of all those years we might have

had together, as though--" And suddenly she checked herself in her

turn, on the brink of saying something that was not so funny after

all.

Probably he understood what impulse had prompted her to terminate

abruptly both laughter and discourse, for he reddened and gazed rather

fixedly at the radiator which was now clanking and clinking in a very

noisy manner.

"You ought to have a fireplace and an open fire," he said. "It's the

cosiest thing on earth--with a cat on the hearth and a big chair and a

good book.... Athalie, do you remember that stove? And how I sat there

in wet shooting clothes and stockinged feet?"

"Yes," she said, drawing her own bare ones further under her chair.

"Do you know what you looked like to me when you came in so silently,

dressed in your red hood and cloak?"

"What did I look like?"

"A little fairy princess."

"I? In that ragged cloak?"

"I didn't see the rags. All I saw was your lithe little fairy figure

and your yellow hair and your wonderful dark eyes in the ruddy light

from the stove. I tell you, Athalie, I was enchanted."

"How odd! I never dreamed you thought that of me when I stood there

looking at you, utterly lost in admiration--"

"Oh, come, Athalie!" he laughed; "you are getting back at me!"

"It's true. I thought you the most wonderful boy I had ever seen."

"Until I disillusioned you," he said.

"You never did, C. Bailey, Junior."

"What! Not when I proved a piker?"

But she only smiled into his amused and challenging eyes and slowly

shook her head.

Once or twice, mechanically, he had slipped a flat gold cigarette case

from his pocket, and then, mechanically still, had put it back. Not

accustomed to modern men of his caste she had not paid much attention

to the unconscious hint of habit. Now as he did it again it occurred

to her to ask him why he did not smoke.