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“Don’t worry, my friend,” he laughed; “she’s not the one.”

Ellis grew red to the ears.

“We’ll leave you to Mary,” said Burr retreating with a smile; “she’ll tell you the rest–from where I left off.”

The girl with the big brown eyes was still smiling in an amused sort of way, but Ellis showed no resentment. He knew that to her he was a strange animal–very new and very peculiar. He did not do as a lesser man would have done, pretend knowledge of things unknown, but looked the girl frankly in the eyes.

“Pardon me, but it was all rather sudden,” he explained. The red had left his face now. “I’ve only known a few women–and they were not–of your class. This is Mr. Burr’s joke, not mine.”

The smile faded from the girl’s face. She met him on his own ground, and they were friends.

“Don’t take it that way,” she protested, quickly. “I see, he’s been telling you of Washington’s Mary Philipse. It merely happens that my name is the same. I’m simply a friend visiting here. Can’t I show you the house? It’s rather interesting.”

If Ellis was a novelty to the woman, she was equally so to him. Unconventionality reigned in that house, and they were together an hour. Never before in his life had Ellis learned so much, nor caught so many glimpses of things beyond, in an equal length of time. His idea of woman had been trite, a little vague. He had no ideal; he had simply accepted, without question, the one specimen he had known well.

In an uncertain sort of way he had thought of the sex as being invariably creatures of unquestioned virtue, but of mind somewhat defective; who were to be respected and protected, loved perhaps with the love animals know; but of such an one as this he had no conception.

Here was a woman, younger than he, whose unconscious familiarity with things, which to him lay hidden in the dark land of ignorance, affected him like a stimulant. A woman who had read and travelled and thought and felt; whose mind met him even in the unhesitating confidence of knowledge–it is no wonder that he was in a dream. It turned his little world upside down: so brief a time had elapsed since he had cursed woman for bringing crime into his life, in the narrowness of his ignorance thinking them all alike. He was in the presence of a superior, and his own smallness came over him like a flood.

He mentally swore, then and there, with a tightening of his jaw that meant finality, that he would raise himself to her plane. The girl saw the look, and wondered at it.

That night, at parting, the eyes of the two met. A moment passed–and another, and neither spoke a word. Then a smile broke over the face of Mary Philipse, and it was answered on the face of the man. Equals had met equals. At last the girl held out her hand.

“Call again, please,” she requested. “Good-night.”

Years passed. Burr had gone and returned again, and Jumel mansion had waxed festive to honor his home-coming. Then he opened an office in the city, and drab-colored routine fell upon him–to remain.

Meanwhile Time had done much for Ellis–rather, it had allowed him to do much for himself. He had passed through all the stages of transition–confusion, homesickness, despondency; but incentive to do was ever with him.

At first he had worked to forget, and, in self-defence; but Nature had been kind, and with years memory touched him softly, as though it were the past of another.

Then a new incentive came to him: an incentive more potent than the former, and which grew so slowly he did not recognize it, until he met it unmistakably face to face. Again into his life and against his will had crept a woman, and this woman’s name was Mary Philipse. He met her now on her own ground, but still, as of old, with honors even. She had changed little since he first saw her. As often as he called, he met the same frank smile, and the brown eyes still regarded him with the same old candid, unreserved interest.