``If you'll forgive the unforgivable,'' she read ``you'll forgive me for not being here when you come down. `Circumstances over which I have no control have called me away.' May we let it go at that?
M. J. ARKWRIGHT.
As Alice Greggory's amazed, questioning eyes left the note they fell upon the long white glove on the floor by the door. Half mechanically she crossed the room and picked it up; but almost at once she dropped it with a low cry.
``Billy! He--saw--Billy!'' Then a flood of understanding dyed her face scarlet as she turned and fled to the blessedly unseeing walls of her own room.
Not ten minutes later Rosa tapped at her door with a note.
``It's from Mr. Arkwright, Miss. He's downstairs.''
Rosa's eyes were puzzled, and a bit startled.
``Mr. Arkwright!''
``Yes, Miss. He's come again. That is, Ididn't know he'd went--but he must have, for he's come again now. He wrote something in a little book; then he tore it out and gave it to me.
He said he'd wait, please, for an answer.''
``Oh, very well, Rosa.''
Miss Greggory took the note and spoke with an elaborate air of indifference that was meant to express a calm ignoring of the puzzled questioning in the other's eyes. The next moment she read this in Arkwright's peculiar scrawl:
``If you've already forgiven the unforgivable, you'll do it again, I know, and come down-stairs.
Won't you, please? I want to see you.''
Miss Greggory lifted her head with a jerk.
Her face was a painful red.
``Tell Mr. Arkwright I can't possibly--'' She came to an abrupt pause. Her eyes had encountered Rosa's, and in Rosa's eyes the puzzled questioning was plainly fast becoming a shrewd suspicion.
There was the briefest of hesitations; then, lightly, Miss Greggory tossed the note aside.
``Tell Mr. Arkwright I'll be down at once, please,'' she directed carelessly, as she turned back into the room.
But she was not down at once. She was not down until she had taken time to bathe her red eyes, powder her telltale nose, smoothe her ruffled hair, and whip herself into the calm, steady-eyed, self-controlled young woman that Arkwright finally rose to meet when she came into the room.
``I thought it was only women who were privileged to change their mind,'' she began brightly;but Arkwright ignored her attempt to conventionalize the situation.
``Thank you for coming down,'' he said, with a weariness that instantly drove the forced smile from the girl's lips. ``I--I wanted to--to talk to you.''
``Yes?'' She seated herself and motioned him to a chair near her. He took the seat, and then fell silent, his eyes out the window.
``I thought you said you--you wanted to talk, she reminded him nervously, after a minute.
``I did.'' He turned with disconcerting abruptness.
``Alice, I'm going to tell you a story.''
I shall be glad to listen. People always like stories, don't they?''
``Do they?'' The somber pain in Arkwright's eyes deepened. Alice Greggory did not know it, but he was thinking of another story he had once told in that same room. Billy was his listener then, while now-- A little precipitately he began to speak.
``When I was a very small boy I went to visit my uncle, who, in his young days, had been quite a hunter. Before the fireplace in his library was a huge tiger skin with a particularly lifelike head.
The first time I saw it I screamed, and ran and hid. I refused then even to go into the room again. My cousins urged, scolded, pleaded, and laughed at me by turns, but I was obdurate. Iwould not go where I could see the fearsome thing again, even though it was, as they said, `nothing but a dead old rug!'
``Finally, one day, my uncle took a hand in the matter. By sheer will-power he forced me to go with him straight up to the dreaded creature, and stand by its side. He laid one of my shrinking hands on the beast's smooth head, and thrust the other one quite into the open red mouth with its gleaming teeth.
