the dining-room of the tiny apartment where they lived together, and she
made some coffee afterwards, to carry off the effect of the Newburg
lobster. Perhaps because there was nothing to carry off the effect of
the coffee, he heard her, through the partition of their rooms, stirring
restlessly after he had gone to bed, and a little later she came to his
door, which she set ajar, to ask, "Are you awake, Philip?"

"You seem to be, mother," he answered, with an amusement at her question
which seemed not to have imparted itself to her when she came in and
stood beside his bed in her dressing-gown.

"You don't think we have judged her too harshly, Philip?"

"Do you, mother?"

"No, I think we couldn't be too severe in a thing like that. She
probably thought you were like some of the other story-writers; she
couldn't feel differences, shades. She pretended to be taken with the
circumstances of your work, but she had to do that if she wanted to fool
you. Well, she has got her come-uppings, as she would probably say."

Verrian replied, thoughtfully, "She didn't strike me as a country person
--at least, in her first letter."

"Then you still think she didn't write both?"

"If she did, she was trying her hand in a personality she had invented."

"Girls are very strange," his mother sighed. "They like excitement,
adventure. It's very dull in those little places. I shouldn't wish you