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 blocks. Then Roger, without saying anything, built the whole thing up again, out of the same blocks. Now the house is really done. Some one else'—she thought of Ripley—'might add a few gables or a classic portico, but he couldn't tear it down nor build it up.'

'And yet you have no idea what you want to do with this elegant structure.'

'Live in it. Work in it. I really like to work, and I have not done badly. Mr. Fox now pays me almost as much as Miss Bigley.'

'Money! Bah, is money your standard? If it is, why did you not marry Smith Scollay? You'd have earned more money that way than you ever will with Messrs. Redcliffe & Fox. He seemed to drop you very abruptly, Lanice. I suppose you were vastly disappointed to see such a good catch get out of the bag.'

'No, we weren't suited. I opened the bag myself—and let him out.'

'Do you intend to marry?'

'No,' she gave the stereotyped answer convincingly.

'Then why,' blazed Pauline, in a voice that suggested that this was the climax of the whole conversation, 'do you wickedly persist in dragging Professor Ripley, that distinguished scholar, about after you? He is an older man, Lanice, of established reputation. It seems to me that you have kept him dangling long enough.'

'Dangling? He doesn't dangle. I did think for a while that he was interested in me—romantically. That was when I was in England. I...er...even