But none, I felt quite certain, was fairer than Mary Will. The lights shone softly on her red-brown hair and on those white shoulders that were youth incarnate. She was wearing-well, I can't describe it, but it was unquestionably the very dress she should have worn. Thank God she had it and had put it on! She came into the library, and all the gloom and staleness fled.

"My dear-my dear!" Henry Drew met her, his eyes alight with admiration. "You are a picture, and no mistake. You carry me back-indeed you do-back to the time when these rooms were alive with youth and beauty." He waved a hand to the portrait of a woman in the post of honor above the fireplace. "You are very like her. My first wife, you know." He stood for a moment, pathetic, unhappy, weighed down by the years. more human than I had ever seen him before. "I don't imagine you two will object to being left alone," he said finally, attempting a smile. "I'm going to have a look at the table. Want everything just right." He crossed the hall and disappeared.

"Well, Mary Will-here I am," I announced.

"Sure enough," smiled Mary Will.

"This afternoon," said I, "at four o'clock, you put me out of your life forever. Twice since then I've popped back. And I'll go on popping, and popping, until you're a sweet gray-haired old lady, so you might as well take me and have done."

"Too bad," mused Mary Will, "about the fog. If you could have seen all those other girls-"

"Don't want to see them," I said firmly, "Tell me, how do you like it here in the family vault?"

She shuddered. "It's a bit oppressive. I'm going to strike out for myself tomorrow. Mr. Drew gave me a check tonight-I can live on that until I get a job."

"The cost of living is frightfully high."

"But worth it-don't you think?" she asked.

"With you-undoubtedly."

"You just keep going round in circles," she complained.

"You've got me going round in circles," I laughed. I came close to her before the fire. "Mary Will-I've never been in San Francisco before. And I've never been married. Two new experiences. I'd like to tackle them together. Tomorrow, after the fog lifts, and I've seen and rejected all the other girls, I'll meet you with a license in my pocket."

"Oh, dear-you are so sudden."

"It's girls like you that make men sudden."

"I never gave you any encouragement, I'm sure," she protested.

"You let me look at you. Encouragement enough."

"Look at me-and pity me."

"Now don't start that. It's love!"

"No-pity."

"Love, I fell you."

This might have gone on indefinitely, but suddenly Carlotta Drew's voice broke in, calling, and Mary Will fled, just as I had nearly got her hand. She fled, and that dim room was instantly old and stale again.

I stood alone with the past. My thoughts were most jumbled, chaotic. Drews-Drews innumerable-were looking down at me, wondering, perhaps, about this stranger who dared make love in the very room where they themselves had laughed and loved in the old far days.