Allan looked down at the heap of shining hair below him, all he could see of Phyllis.
"Yes," he said consideringly. "She certainly is."
At a certain slowness in his tone, Phyllis sprang up. "You must be tired to death!" she said. "It must be nearly ten. Do you feel worn out?"
Before he could say anything, Mrs. De Guenther had also risen, and was sweeping away her husband.
"Of course he is," she said decisively. "What have we all been thinking of? And we must go to bed, too, Albert, if you insist on taking that early train in the morning, and I insist on going with you. Good-night, children."
Wallis had appeared by this time, and was wheeling Allan from the room before he had a chance to say much of anything but good-night. The De Guenthers talked a little longer to Phyllis, and were gone also. Phyllis flung herself full-length on the rugs and pillows before the fire, too tired to move further.
Well, she had everything that she had wished for on that wet February day in the library. Money, leisure to be pretty, a husband whom she "didn't have to associate with much," rest, if she ever gave herself leave to take it, and the rose-garden. She had her wishes, as uncannily fulfilled as if she had been ordering her fate from a department store, and had money to pay for it.... And back there in the city it was somebody's late night, and that somebody—it would be Anna Black's turn, wouldn't it?—was struggling with John Zanowskis and Sadie Rabinowitzes by the lapful, just as she had. And yet—and yet they had really cared for her, those dirty, dear little foreigners of hers. But she'd had to work for their liking.... Perhaps—perhaps she could make Allan Harrington like her as much as the children did. He had been so kind to-night about the move and all, and so much brighter, her handsome Allan in his gray, every-day-looking man-clothes! If she could stay brave enough and kind enough and bright enough ... her eyelids drooped.... Wallis was standing respectfully over her.
"Mrs. Harrington," he was saying, with a really masterly ignoring of her attitude on the rug, "Mr. Harrington says you haven't bid him good-night yet."
An amazing message! Had she been in the habit of it, that he demanded it like a small boy? But she sprang up and followed Wallis into Allan's room. He was lying back in his white silk sleeping things among the white bed-draperies, looking as he always had before. Only, he seemed too alive and awake still for his old rôle of Crusader-on-a-tomb.
"Phyllis," he began eagerly, as she sat down beside him, "what made you so frightened when I first came? Wallis hadn't worried you, had he?"