"There!" she cried, half mockingly. "You can have as much light as you like, and when you get tired of that we can cut them all off and sit in the firelight." She touched another button and let him see the room in the soft dim shadows and rich glow of the fire. Then she turned the full light on again and entered the room, dropping into one big leather chair at the side of the fireplace and indicating another big chair on the opposite side. She had no notion of sitting near him or of luring him to her side to-night. She had read him aright. Hers was the demure part to play, the reserved, shy maiden, the innocent, child-like, womanly woman. She would play it, but she would humble him! So she had vowed with her little white teeth set in her red lips as she stood before her dressing-table mirror that night when he had fled from her red room and her.
Well pleased, with a sigh of relief he dropped into the chair and sat watching her, talking idly, as one who is feeling his way to a pleasant intimacy of whose nature he is not quite sure. She was very sweet and sympathetic about the examinations, told how she hated them herself and thought they ought to be abolished; said he was a wonder, that her cousin had told her he was a regular shark, and yet he hadn't let himself be spoiled by it, either. She flattered him gently with that deference a girl can pay to a man which makes her appear like an angel of light, and fixes him for any confidence in the world he has to give. She sat so quietly, with big eyes lifted now and then, talking earnestly and appreciatively of fine and noble things, that all his best thoughts about her were confirmed. He watched her, thinking what a lovely, lovable woman she was, what gentle sympathy and keen appreciation of really fine qualities she showed, child even though she seemed to be! He studied her, thinking what a friend she might be to that other poor girl in her loneliness and sorrow if she only would. He didn't know that he was yielding again to the lure that the red light had made the last time he was there. He didn't realize that, red light or white light, he was being led on. He only knew that it was a pleasure to talk to her, to be near her, to feel her sympathy; and that something had unlocked the innermost depths of his heart, the place he usually kept to himself, even away from the fellows. He had never quite opened it to a human being before. Tennelly had come nearer to getting a glimpse than any one. But now he was really going to open it, for he had at last found another human being who could understand and appreciate.
"May I shut off the bright light and sit in the firelight?" he asked, and Gila acquiesced sweetly. It was just what she had been leading up to, but she did not move from her reticent yet sympathetic position in the retired depths of the great chair, where she knew the shadows and the glow of the fire would play on her face and show her sweet, serious pose.
"I want to tell you about a girl I have met this week."
A chill fell upon Gila, but she did not show it, she never even flickered those long lashes. Another girl! How dared he! The little white teeth set down sharply on the little red tongue out of sight, but the sweet, sympathetic mouth in the glow of the firelight remained placid.
"Yes?" The inflection, the lifted lashes, the whole attitude, was perfect. He plunged ahead.
"You are so very wonderful yourself that I am sure you will appreciate and understand her, and I think you are just the friend she needs."
Gila stiffened in her chair and turned her face nicely to the glow of the fire, so he could just see her lovely profile.
"She is all alone in the city—"
"Oh!" broke forth Gila in almost childish dismay. "Not even a chaperon?"