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he felt he could never love another. Belshue was an artist.

So now, as the jeweller waited on the shabby piazza of the Scovell House, these mumblings of the landlady wounded him. He thought bitterly, "What difference does age make? If a man and a woman really love each other, nothing should come between them."

His heart quickened a beat as he saw the bottom of Nessie's skirt come into the light from the newel post; he marked the little motions of the sheer blue skirt caused by the touch of her knees as the girl lowered herself into view. She looked pale, paler than usual. Her fiar hair was coiled in cables about her ears and at the back of her head; some of it was dark in shadow, some gleamed like pale silk. In the lamplight her eyes were very large and dark. She seemed unusually sober and a little strained. She gave him the faintest mechanical smile as she put her hand in his.

"Did you have a good day?" she asked out of habit.

His delicate jeweller's touch could feel the needle pricks, like fine sandpaper, upon the hardened ends of her fingers.

"So-so," he answered, and then turned toward the shadowy end of the piazza. "Let's sit out here in the swing where it's cool."

The girl answered hurriedly that she thought they "had better sit in the parlour" and moved determinedly into the warm dark room.

The jeweller was disappointed. He followed in Nessie's perfumed wake, obsessed with a nervous desire to sit with her in the swing. He even mentioned it again, but Nessie replied in her hurried manner that somebody might talk about them; Miss Scovell said folks had talked already.

The two entered the hot air of the room which Nessie and Miss Scovell called the "parlour." It was quite dark and stale from lack of ventilation. The jeweller swore mentally at Miss Scovell's intrusion in his affairs, then, as Nessie groped for a lamp, a sudden notion came to him to make the most of his opportunity. He would step forward, put his