I N HER pocket as she spoke her hand rested
upon the little sack of tobacco, which responded
accusingly to the touch of her restless fingers;
and she found time to wonder why she was building
up this fiction for Mr. Arthur Russell. His dis-
covery of Walter's device for whiling away the dull
evening had shamed and distressed her; but she
would have suffered no less if almost any other had
been the discoverer. In this gentleman, after bear-
ing that he was Mildred's Mr. Arthur Russell,
Alice felt not the slightest "personal interest"; and
there was yet to develop in her life such a thing
as an interest not personal. At twenty-two this
state of affairs is not unique.

So far as Alice was concerned Russell might have
worn a placard, "Engaged." She looked upon him
as diners entering a restaurant look upon tables
marked "Reserved": the glance, slightly discon-
tented, passes on at once. Or so the eye of a pros-
pector wanders querulously over staked and estab-

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