Ben Blair

But the sentence was not completed. As suddenly as the change had come to the man's face, the girl had understood. With an impulse she could not have explained to herself, she had drawn away and swiftly mounted the steps of the house. Not until she reached the porch did she turn.

"Don't, don't, please!" she urged. "I beg your pardon. I shouldn't have asked what I did. Forget that I spoke at all." She was struggling for words, for breath. Her color came and went. "Good-night." And not trusting herself to look back, oblivious of courtesy, she almost ran into the house.

Standing as she had left him, his hat in his hand, Clarence Sidwell watched her pass through the lighted vestibule into the darkness beyond.