ask him to dine, because she was going out. She asked him for the
next day, but his board of directors was having a monthly meeting
that night, and he had to be there. How about Saturday?

Saturday she was going out of town, a special meeting of the Red
Cross. They hung there. Nancy was perhaps ashamed to go on through
the list of days, Bert would not ungenerously force her. He left
her, thrilled and yet dissatisfied. He looked back almost with
envy to his state of a few hours earlier, when he had been hoping
that he might meet her.




Chapter Two


The week dragged by. The undercurrent of longing to see Nancy
flowed on and on. Bert wanted nothing else--just Nancy. He had
been spending the summer with a friend, at the friend's uptown
house, but now he thought he would go out to the Venables, and
show some interest in his newly-papered room and hear them speak
of her.

He rang their bell with a thumping heart. It was four o'clock in
the afternoon. She might even be here! Or they might tell him she
was engaged to Clark Belknap of Maryland. ... Bert felt so sick at
the thought that it seemed a fact. He wanted to run away.

Miss Augusta, red-eyed, opened the door. Beyond her he was somehow