Well!" She halted, and gave him her hand.
"Adieu!"

"I couldn't," he began; hesitated, then asked:
"I couldn't come in with you for a little while?"

"Not now," she said, quickly. "You can
come " Shr paused.
"When.?"

"Almost any time." She turned and walked
slowly up the path, but he waited. " You can come
in the evening if you like," she called back to him
over her shoulder.
ALICE ADAMS 157



"Soon?"



As soon as you like!'* She waved her hand;
then ran indoors and watched him from a window
as he went up the street. He walked rapidly, a
fine, easy figure, swinging his stick in a way that
suggested exhilaration. Alice, staring after him
through the irregular apertures of a lace curtain,
showed no similar buoyancy. Upon the instant she
closed the door all sparkle left her: she had become
at once the simple and sometimes troubled girl
her family knew.
"What's going on out there?" her mother asked,
approaching from the dining-room.
"Oh, nothing," Alice said, indifferently, as she
turned away. "That Mr. Russell met me down-
town and walked up with me."

"Mr. Rtissell? Oh, the one that's engaged to
MUdred?"

"Well — ^I don't know for certain. He didn't
seem so much like an engaged man to me." And
she added, in the tone of thoughtful preoccupation :
** Anyhow — ^not so terribly!"

Then she ran upstairs, gave her father his tobacco,
filled his pipe for him, and petted him as he lighted it.
