"Show the lady up," he said in substitution, while his face cleared with a puzzled amusement, and he looked at the card again.

It read "Miss Elfrida Bell," but the odd thing was down in one corner, where ran the statement, in small square type, "_The Illustrated Age_." There was a sweet glory of May sunlight in the streets outside, and she seemed to bring some of it in with her, as well as the actual perfume of the bunch of violets which she wore in her belt.

Her eyes, under the queerest of hats, were bright and soft, there was a faint color in her cheeks.

Her shapely hands were in gray gloves with long gauntlets, and in one of them she carried a business-like little black notebook.
She came in with a shy hesitation that became her very well, and as she approached, their old understanding immediately arranged itself between them.

"I should be perfectly justified in sulking," he declared gaily, disencumbering a chair of a battered tin box of empty twisted tubes for her, "and asking you to what I might attribute the honor of this visit." He put up his eye-glass and stared through it with an absurd affectation of dignified astonishment.