Roberts had availed herself of his invitation to bring them in with her,
and he regularly found "Jinny's" doll tucked up in his bed at night, and
he as regularly disposed of it outside his door in the morning, with a
few sweets, like an offering, tucked under its rigid arms.
But another circumstance touched him more delicately; his room
was arranged with greater care than before, and with an occasional
exhibition of taste that certainly had not distinguished Mrs. Roberts's
previous ministrations. One evening on his return he found a small
bouquet of inexpensive flowers in a glass on his writing-table. He loved
flowers too well not to detect that they were quite fresh, and could
have been put there only an hour or two before he arrived.
The next evening was Saturday, and, as he usually left the office
earlier on that day, it occurred to him, as he walked home, that it was
about the time his fair neighbor would be leaving the theatre, and that
it was possible he might meet her.
At the front door, however, he found Roberts, who returned his greeting
with a certain awkwardness which struck him as singular. When he reached
the niche on the landing he found his candle was gone, but he proceeded
on, groping his way up the stairs, with an odd conviction that both
these incidents pointed to the fact that the woman had just returned or
was expected.
He had also a strange feeling--which may have been owing to the
darkness--that some one was hidden on the landing or on the stairs where
he would pass. This was further accented by a faint odor of patchouli,
as, with his hand on the rail, he turned the corner of the third
landing, and he was convinced that if he had put out his other hand it
would have come in contact with his mysterious neighbor. But a certain
instinct of respect for her secret, which she was even now guarding in
the darkness, withheld him, and he passed on quickly to his own floor.
Here it was lighter; the moon shot a beam of silver across the passage
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