"Isn't it my hour?" And as
she made no answer, he added gently, "Unless it's some one else's?"
She laid the book aside and sank back into her chair. "Mine,
merely," she said.
"I hope that doesn't mean that you're unwilling to share it?"
"With you? By no means. You're welcome to my last crust."
He looked at her reproachfully. "Do you call this the last?"
She smiled as he dropped into the seat across the hearth. "It's a
way of giving it more flavor!"
He returned the smile. "A visit to you doesn't need such
condiments."
She took this with just the right measure of retrospective
amusement.
"Ah, but I want to put into this one a very special taste," she
confessed.
Her smile was so confident, so reassuring, that it lulled him into
the imprudence of saying, "Why should you want it to be different
from what was always so perfectly right?"
She hesitated. "Doesn't the fact that it's the last constitute a
difference?"
"The last--my last visit to you?"
"Oh, metaphorically, I mean--there's a break in the continuity."
Decidedly, she was pressing too hard: unlearning his arts already!
"I don't recognize it," he said. "Unless you make me--" he added,
with a note that slightly stirred her attitude of languid attention.
She turned to him with grave eyes. "You recognize no difference
whatever?"
"None--except an added link in the chain."
"An added link?"
"In having one more thing to like you for--your letting Miss Gaynor
see why I had already so many.
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