"If you are sure I shall not, I shall be glad to be taken as far as Madison Avenue and Thirty-third Street, for I suppose that will be your route." "Quite sure," she replied, seconded by the Carlings, and so it happened that John went directly home instead of going first to his father's office.

The weather was a chilly drizzle, and he was glad to be spared the discomfort of going about in it with hand-bag, overcoat, and umbrella, and felt a certain justification in concluding that, after two years, a few hours more or less under the circumstances would make but little difference.

And then, too, the prospect of half or three-quarters of an hour in Miss Blake's company, the Carlings notwithstanding, was a temptation to be welcomed.

But if he had hoped or expected, as perhaps would have been not unnatural, to discover in that young woman's air any hint or trace of the feeling she had exhibited, or, perhaps it should be said, to a degree permitted to show itself, disappointment was his portion.

Her manner was as much in contrast with that of the last days of their voyage together as the handsome street dress and hat in which she was attired bore to the dress and headgear of her steamer costume, and it almost seemed to him as if the contrasts bore some relation to each other.