enormously exaggerated self-esteem which swamped the young man’s personality like a goitre.  Sharlee did not want to do this.  She liked Mr. Queed, in a peculiar sort of way, and yet she had to make it impossible for him ever to speak to her again.  Her nature was to give pleasure, and therefore she was going to do her utmost to give him pain.  She wanted him to like her, and consequently she was going to insult him past forgiveness.  And she was not even sure that it was going to do him any good.

When her guest walked into her little back parlor that evening, Sharlee was feeling very self-sacrificing and noble.  However, she merely looked uncommonly pretty and tremendously engrossed in herself.  She was in evening dress.  It was Easter Monday, and at nine, as it chanced, she was to go out under the escortage of Charles Gardiner West to some forgathering of youth and beauty.  But her costume was so perfectly suited to the little curtain-raiser called Taking the Little Doctor Down a Peg or Two, that it might have been appointed by a clever stage-manager with that alone in mind.  She was the haughty beauty, the courted princess, graciously bestowing a few minutes from her crowding fetes upon some fourth-rate dependant.  And indeed the little Doctor, with his prematurely old face and his shabby clothes, rather looked the part of the dependant.  Sharlee’s greeting was of the briefest.

“Ah, Mr. Queed....  Sit down.”

Her negligent nod set him away at an immense distance; even he was aware that Charles Weyland had undergone some subtle but marked change since the morning.  The colored maid who had shown him in was retained to button her mistress’ long gloves.  It proved to be a somewhat slow process.  Over the mantel hung a gilt-framed mirror, as wide as the mantel itself.  To this mirror, the gloves buttoned, Miss Weyland passed, and reviewed her appearance with slow attention, giving a pat here, making a minor readjustment there.  But this survey did not suffice for details, it seemed; a more minute examination was needed; over the floor she trailed with leisurely grace, and rang the bell.

“Oh, Mary—­my vanity-box, please.  On the dressing-table.”

Seating herself under the lamp, she produced from the contrivance the tiniest little mirror ever seen.  As she raised it to let it perform its dainty function, her glance fell on Queed, sitting darkly in his rocking-chair.  A look of mild surprise came into her eye:  not that it was of any consequence, but plainly she had forgotten that he was there.

“Oh ...  You don’t mind waiting a few minutes?”

“I do m—­”

“You promised half an hour I think?  Never fear that I shall take longer—­”

“I did not promise half an hour for such—­”

“It was left to me to decide in what way the time should be employed, I believe.  What I have to say can be said briefly, but to you, at least, it should prove immensely interesting.”  She stifled a small yawn with the gloved finger-tips of her left hand.  “However, of course don’t let me keep you if you are pressed for time.”