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 "I always feel like that place in Carnation Flower where Juan has a fever and goes into the church and thinks the Madonna is Annunciata."

"Juan and Annunciata! Elliott, am I betraying them? Am I silly? Tell me I am! I have this feeling that when Carnation Flower is published, if it is published"

"If!"

"Well, then, when—I have this feeling that they'll feel betrayed. I've made them from bits of my own heart, my dreams, my secret things, and it seems wrong, somehow, to show them just to anybody, to sell them."

"Think of the good you'll be doing."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, bringing such beauty into the world, and—I don't know—I mean—such truth"

"Well, I do think that—hope it, anyway. My poor little book may not have very much, but I have tried to give it truth and beauty. But don't be disappointed in me when it isn't popular, darling. Will you promise? Be-

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 cause it won't be. I don't want it to be. I want just to speak simply, truly, to the few who will understand. You know I don't want what the world means when it says success"

"Oh, I do know, darling. That's just the way I feel about my own work."

"What do I write for, Elliott? Not for success. I should feel sick with terror if that came to me. I'd know I'd failed, somehow, that I hadn't been true to the real things. Not for pleasure, certainly, for my work is done in grief and pain, and I don't use those words lightly, dear. And yet I must write or die. Why is this burden on me?"

"Because you have the artist's soul, Christabel. I know how it is myself"

"Will I never go free?"

"Never, my darling."

"Will I always have to suffer this ache of beauty? Oh, Elliott, will I always have to suffer?"

Oh, beautiful girl! his heart cried, worship-

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 ing the glowing face she bent above him. And she loves me. Not Gerald Smith, not anyone else in the world. She loves me. She might have chosen anyone, she's so popular at every party; everyone loves her, but she loves me. The foot he was sitting on began to go to sleep, but he tried to keep from moving, for fear of shattering their perfect moment.

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engagement had helped her work so much that Carnation Flower, published that spring, was quite a success. But by the time it was in the bookshops she was glad to go to Atlantic City for a rest, with Aunt Lydia, who wanted company.

Aunt Lydia was as good as Talbot Emery Towne's whole publicity department. She advertised Christabel and Carnation Flower to all the old ladies and gentlemen in the combined hotel and sanitarium where she and Christabel stayed; she dealt out copies to those who could not be bullied into buying. She went up and down the Boardwalk in a rolling-chair, asking for Carnation Flower at all the bookshops. The inmates of Oversea Hall were well trained by her. They waited about with Carnation Flowers and fountain pens, to ask for autographs, they broke off talk of health to talk literature with the authoress. "Have you read

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 that lovely new book by Zona Grey? Or is it by Zane Gale? Fiddlesticks! I always get those two mixed up!"

Christabel was sweet to them all. "But I wish they wouldn't treat us quite so much like royalty!" she complained whimsically to Aunt Lydia. "You and Mrs. Carey are so regal that even I become a princess in your reflected glory, Aunt Lydia darling!"

"Thee's an absurd child," Aunt Lydia answered, fondly. They were dining at a table covered with little dishes of this and that, with library paste for sauce. At the next table old Mr. Blanchard was having both vanilla ice cream and a Boston cream puff, and Mrs. Blanchard was sneaking an apple into her knitting-bag. I hope age brings me something more beautiful than greediness, Christabel thought, watching them. I hope it brings me even deeper love and understanding.

In the doorway the headwaitress stretched her mouth to show her teeth to arriving and departing diners, and then followed them with

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 cold eyes. What a place, Christabel thought, trying first a kiss full of shredded string cocoanut, then a sawdust lady-finger.

Mrs. Carey sailed out, making the signals of head and hand that meant "See you outside," and Aunt Lydia fluttered her fingers. Then came the Simpsons, who, because they had bought a copy of Carnation Flower, were inclined to presume. Mrs. Simpson tottering on too high heels, a mountain of black lace with a crimson rose on the lower slopes, bowed impressively, and so did gray-coated, whitetrousered Mr. Simpson. Aunt Lydia dealt them a small cold unsmiling bow.

"Thee knows, I think that woman's hair is dyed. And so pushing—just because thee wrote in thy book for them they'll be telling people thee's a friend of theirs. Thee'll see! Through, dear? I suppose Mrs. Carey will be waiting."

They in their turn were affable to the headwaitress. They went through the reception

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 hall, and on past the room where a little dark man peeped out from his store of gauze scarfs and knitting-bags, a little dark man, Christabel thought, who should have worn a turban and looked out from another bazaar on bare feet, yashmaks, camels swaying past, instead of on fat ladies, old gentlemen thin and trembling as dead leaves, and black boys drifting by with pitchers of ice-water. He'll never know, she thought, what I have felt about him. And yet it all helps. Every understanding thought, every kind thought, helps—somehow.

Mrs. Carey with two lesser ladies was already at the card table that was reserved for her and for Aunt Lydia night after night, and bridge began.

"Your bid, Lady."

"My bid? Mercy! what a hand!"

"Don't expect any help from me, partner!"

"Mustn't talk across the table, ladies."

Scuse us, please? Us was naughty dirls, but us'll be dood now!"

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 "Try one of these chocolates in silver paper, Mrs. Huntington."

"Thee's a bad lady, to tempt me!"

"I just wish chocolates liked me as well as I like them!"

"Have a chocolate, Christabel dear? I must get rid of these before my son comes tomorrow, or he'll think I didn't appreciate them."

"Is thy son coming tomorrow?"

"Yes. Isn't it wonderful that he's able to get down again so soon. Mm! Mershy! B'carefu' thish kin'—mmp! Cologne or something inside these big round ones!" She buried her chin in her breast, as a pigeon buries its bill. "Did I spill? I guess not. Yes, Curtis iscoming. I was so surprised when he wrote that he'd be down this week, too."

Christabel, sharing a chair beside the bridge table with Aunt Lydia's book and shawl and work-bag, saw through a shining mist the roomful of old ladies, pale or purple, playing bridge

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 by the light of mustard-shaded lamps. She, too, had received a letter from Mrs. Carey's son saying he was coming again to Atlantic City, but she was not surprised.

She had been thinking of Curtis Carey 3d a great deal since his visit last week to Oversea Hall. She liked to make excuses to say his name. "Who told me that? Oh, I know—it was Curtis Carey." "Curtis Carey says his mother says you're one of the few real aristocrats she knows, Aunt Lydia." "Curtis Carey"

She was planning to write a new book for his eyes, as Carnation Flower had been written for Elliott's. It must show him the depth and beauty of her nature; it must show him, subtly, how used she was to things like footmen and conservatories, and how little they impressed her.

Sometimes Curtis and Elliott would come into her mind side by side, not to Elliott's advantage. The thought of him made her feel wise and sad and subtle, made her feel old as

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 the stars or the sea. It was at one of those times that she wrote the poem beginning:

But he loves me so! she would think. He will be happy, and I will have my work, and, after all, life isn't so terribly long, and then comes peace. But when it was Curtis she thought of, she wrote to Elliott. The more glowing her thoughts of the one, the more intense her letters to the other. It was unfortunate that just at this time Elliott had sprained his right wrist so that he could only write a few jerky and tremulous lines with his left hand, or dictate restrainedly to Gobby.

[she wrote to Elliott, with a hand that shook as she thought of Curtis, who had arrived that day]

How I miss—miss you! When will the Wings stir in my heart again? I'm like a

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 prism that is nothing until the Sun shines through it, and wakes it up, and makes it laugh and sparkle and scatter Shreds of Rainbow all about—and you're the Sun! I need you, Sun of my Heart!

This place is so dreary, my darling. It's a temptation to let one's little shining be buried under Talk of Health and Knitted Shawls and Diets and Draughts. But then I think, here are poor sick old things being brave enough to put on their beads and tell jokes, and outside are the Sky and the Sea. And I try to shine for them, gently, until they shine back at me. They love me, Elliott—isn't it touching? It makes me feel so humble.

And I am happy, Dearest. Isn't there a You? I went down on the sand yesterday at sunset, under a pink sky, with a pink and green sea, foam-edged, creeping up to my feet. And I sent you a message by a small Rosy Cloud—did it reach you? And I thought, here am I, ungrateful one, being unhappy in a World where there are Waves and Courage and Work

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 to be Done and Little Pink Clouds and My Own Dear—and all my discouragements left me, and the Round World sang! Forever and forever,

She put her letter into an envelope, took it out again, and got her Secret Journal. Curtis Carey and she were going for a walk and he would be waiting for her, but it was better to let him wait a few minutes. She began to copy, the letters growing more and more scalloped through her agitation at the thought of Curtis:

"This place is so dreary—it's a temptation to let one's little shining be buried under Talk of Health and Knitted Shawls and Diets"

"I was afraid you'd forgotten about me," Curtis said, as she stepped out of the elevator.

"Oh, did I keep you waiting? I didn't mean to. I'm so sorry! And such a place to wait in! Lost in a jungle of potted palms, among these big chairs like a herd of elephants."

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 "You certainly can express things wonderfully!"

"Oh no! But I do try to see the funny side of things. It helps, I think. Don't you?"

"Yes, indeed. There's nothing like a sense of humor."

"No, is there?"

"I'm always sorry for people who haven't any."

"Aren't you?"

This sedate conversation was getting them nowhere. It had been different in her anticipation. But she was sustained, as they went along the Boardwalk, by the knowledge that they were a good-looking couple. She felt that to deny one's own good looks was both silly and ungrateful. She had written in her Journal:

"It isn't Outer Beauty that I want, and yet I must be grateful for this gift that makes me able to give pleasure to so many. And I can't help knowing that some kind people think I'm lovely-looking. I can't put my fingers in my

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 ears and shut my eyes all the time. But I want to be both grateful for it and humble about it, so I have made myself this little prayer:

"Oh, Lord, I thank Thee for Thy Gift of Beauty, but I pray Thee to let my body be only the Cloud that thinly veils the Real Beauty within. And, if Thou wilt, let that grow brighter and more bright, until it shines through this Cloud of my body. Amen."

And Curtis Carey's clothes were enough to make the world a better-looking place, even if they had not contained Curtis. His expensive hat, set on one side of his head, was enchanting to Christabel after the Oversea Hall atmosphere, so lacking in dash. As she looked at it she thought of Elliott, with his hair always a little too long, in a fringe in the back.

"I read your book last week. It's great!"

"Oh, do you like it, really? Thank you so much!"

"Gosh! I don't see how you can think of it all. And then writing it all out!"

"It's the thing I love to do."

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 "It sort of scared me about coming down again. I was afraid I couldn't be high-brow enough to interest you."

"You! When I've been thinking all week that you'd never want to talk to me again after I'd shown you how ignorant I am!"

"You ignorant!"

"Yes. I don't know anything about all the things you know everything about—salmon fishing, and yachting, and being in China, and riding to hounds"

She felt herself growing younger by the minute. He knows so much, she thought. He is so strong. I'm nothing but a child compared with him. Helpless. But strongly, tenderly protected.

"Well, but, Good Lord! those are just things I've happened to do. It isn't like having wonderful thoughts, like yours."

"You see, we've always been poor, and I've lived so simply. We have a little bit of a house, and there's just mother and father and me, with our funny old Katie Sullivan to take

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 care of us, and love me and order me about just as if I were a little girl still, and then there's our little garden—I do adore that so! You see, the gentleman we call in moments of grandeur the gardener is also furnace man and window-washer and everything, so I take care of the flowers. And the furniture's shabby and my dresses are made over, but I'm such a goose that as long as there's a rose to smell or a poem to read I don't know enough not to be happy!"

"You know, you're a wonderful girl! I mean, most of the girls I know would sort of put on and try to make an impression—I mean, they wouldn't be just sweet and sincere, the way you are."

"Oh, but what else could one be? What else except sincere, I mean? Because, after all, being real is the only thing that matters, isn't it? To be really real and to be kind."

"Well, you're both, all right! I saw last week the way you acted with mother and Mrs. Huntington, and believe me, I know it isn't

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 always easy to be so sympathetic and considerate with older people."

"Do you know, you're rather an—understanding—person?"

"Were you surprised when I wrote that I was coming down again?"

"Surprised isn't the word!"

"Were you sorry?"

She answered with a glance.

"I broke a date to go to the National with a foursome this week-end."

"Oh, why did you?"

"Can't you guess?"

"Because you knew how happy it would make your mother to have you come here, I think. Isn't it touching? Doesn't it make your heart ache, to think how happy we can make them? Oversea Hall seems so dreary sometimes, it's a temptation to let oneself be buried under talk about health and diets and draughts and shawls; and then I think of their being old, and yet brave enough to dress up and make little jokes—it makes me want to of

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 cry, it makes me want to do something beautiful for them"

"When you talk like that you make me feel like—don't think I'm silly or sentimental or anything, but—well, like saying my prayers to you."

She looked at him gently. There were tears in her eyes. For her, too, waited that black pit of age, at the end of the long road, the road of renunciation that she must travel because of her promise to Elliott. She looked through her tears at this understanding man who had never heard of Elliott.

"But I didn't come to see mother. I came to see you."

"I'm glad," she said, simply, with a smile that made him flush, a touch of her hand on his, lighter than a butterfly.

They played bridge with Mrs. Carey and Aunt Lydia after dinner. Christabel, being exquisitely kind to the old, hardly looked at Curtis, but she felt his eyes on her-all evening.

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 She fell asleep thinking of him, thrilling in the dark.

In the gray of the morning she was wakened by Aunt Lydia's maid. Aunt Deborah was dangerously ill. They were to leave at once.

All the way to Philadelphia Christabel fretted. If only she had known yesterday

But a letter came from Curtis:

"What have I done? Why did you run away without a word? If I come over to Germantown next Saturday, will you see me?"

And the following Monday Christabel wrote to Elliott:

"Let me go from your life with no bitterness, no crying-out, but gently, as the Little Mermaid melted into foam. We have always given each other Truth, and I must give you Truth now, although it breaks my heart" And so strong is habit that she ended the sentence "my darling," and had to rewrite the letter.

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438

John Mildmay. 7 pl. 2 maps. sm. 4°. Edinburgh, Edmonston & Douglas, 1866.

——— The same. 7 pl. 2 maps. sm. 4°. Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott & co., 1866.

(D :) Register of the weather in Iceland [1811-1813], by two Danish gentlemen sent to survey the coasts, with a supplementary register by mr. Gladstone. In "Annals of philosophy; or, magazine of natural history." v. 11. 8° London, Baldwin, Cradock, & Joy, no. 2, Feb. 1818, pp. 96-103 no. 3, March 1818, pp. 169-175: no. 6, June 1818, pp. 414-422.

(G:) See (Edwin, editor). All the world over. 1877.

(Le comte Eugène). Sahara and Lapland. Travels in the African desert and the polar world. Translated from the French by mrs. Cashel Hoey. 18 pl. 12°. London, Asher & co., 1874.

(Julia). Wonderful stories from northern lands. With an introduction by the rev. G: W: Cox, and six illustrations from designs by W. F. Weigand, engraved by G. Pearson. 6 pl. 12°. London, Longmans, Green, & co., 1871.

(M.. Wollstonecraft, mrs. W:) Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. 8°. London, printed for J. Johnson, 1796.

(C:A.) Denmark and Germany since 1815. With four maps. 8° London, J: Murray, 1862.

(Edmund W:) The Danish national theatre. [Anon.] In "The Cornhill magazine." v. 30. 8° London, Smith, Elder & co., no. 177, Sept. 1874, pp. 297-308.

——— The Eyrbyggja saga. In "The Cornhill magazine." v. 41. 8°. London, Smith, Elder, & co., no. 246, June 1880, pp. 712-722.

——— The Lofoden islands. In "Fraser's magazine." v. 84, n. s. v. 4. 8°. London, Longmans, Green & co., no. 23, Nov. 1871, pp. 563-574.

——— Norwegian poetry since 1814. In "Fraser's magazine." v. 86, n. s. v. 6. 8°. London, Longmans, Green & co., no. 34, Oct. 1872, pp. 435-449.

——— The present condition of Norway. In "Fraser's magazine." v. 89, n. s. v. 9. 8°. London, Longmans, Green & co., no. 50 Feb. 1874, pp. 174-185.

——— Studies in the literature of northern Europe. With a frontispiece designed and etched by L. Alma Tadema. 12°. London, C. Kegan Paul & co., 1879.


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 to agents in matters of great moment, on which important results depended. This feature in his character is illustrated in a remarkable degree by the 'Napoleon Correspondence,' now in course of publication, and particularly by the contents of the 15th volume, which include the letters, orders, and despatches, written by the Emperor at Finkenstein, a little chateau on the frontier of Poland in the year 1807, shortly after the victory of Eylau.

The French army was then lying encamped along the river Passarge with the Russians before them, the Austrians on their right flank, and the conquered Prussians in their rear. A long line of communications had to be maintained with France, through a hostile country; but so carefully and with such foresight was this provided for, that it is said Napoleon never missed a post. The movements of armies, the bringing up of reinforcements from remote points in France, Spain, Italy, and Germany, the opening of canals and the levelling of roads to enable the produce of Poland and Prussia to be readily transported to his encampments, had his unceasing attention, down to the minutest details. We find him directing where horses were to be obtained, making arrangements for an adequate supply of saddles, ordering shoes for the soldiers, and specifying the number of rations of bread, biscuit, and spirits that were to be brought to camp, or stored in magazines for the use of the troops. At the same time we find him writing to Paris giving directions for the reorganization of the French College, devising a scheme of public education, dictating bulletins


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answered Christabel's letter beautifully. Then he lay down, at eleven o'clock in the morning, and slept until Gobby came in and stepped on the cat at seven that evening.

The two men had supper together at The Mouse Trap. Elliott found it pleasant to be back in the familiar atmosphere of orange curtains, candle drippings, and sprays of bittersweet, with Lola and Peggy friendly and welcoming, slapping around in their sandals, after all the small dark Italian restaurants he had been to lately. Christabel had not seemed to care for the various tearooms, run by awfully nice girls, that he had patronized before his engagement.

As they ate their chicken patties and ice-cream, he explained to Gobby that his life was in pieces and that he couldn't talk about it yet.

"Now listen, Elliott, what you've got to do

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 is to get to work on your painting. How long since you've done anything?"

"Well, not since we—not since Christabel—we I've been too busy living, Gobby. And now that I'll have the time, what's the use?"

"Make her sorry."

"I wouldn't do anything in the world to cause her pain."

"All the same, I do think you ought to get back to your painting. Sublimate your emotion, man!"

"It's easy to talk, but you haven't lost everything that makes life worth while," Elliott answered, mournfully, his eyes fixed on the gigantic slice of chocolate cake crumbling beneath his fork.

"I'd rather have your memories than most people's realizations."

"Yes, nothing can take those from me. Somehow I knew this would happen. I knew it was all too perfect to come true. What had I to offer a wonderful girl like Christabel? And

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 yet like a fool I went on hoping—deceiving myself."

"Well, think of Abélard and Héloïse, and Dante and Beatrice—they were always getting separated or something, and they're the world's great lovers. Tristram and Isolde, too—Romeo and Juliet"

Elliott and Christabel. Elliott just stopped himself from saying it aloud. Mr. Foster and Miss Caine. How different that sounded! But Elliott and Christabel

"You'd never be satisfied, either of you, with bourgeois contentment. I don't so much mean make her sorry as I mean make her proud of you. Demi-tasse? I think we'd better have big cups of coffee tonight, don't you? With cream?"

"I don't care—yes, cream. It all seems so empty."

"Big cups, Peggy, please. Of course it seems empty, but, Good Lord! what's an artist made for except to transmute his pain into the

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 world's beauty? You've got to give, man, you've got to give!"

"That's what she always said."

He slept next moming until nearly noon. But after breakfast at the pâtisserie around the corner he began to paint again. And every day after that he painted, no longer apprehensive of her coming in with a few sweet peas, or a book, or a pomegranate, saying, "It's your mouse, come to keep mouse-still," and presently, "But when you are through, darling"

"It's certainly true that the artist works best in pain," Gobby told him. He actually sounds envious, Elliott thought, squeezing the mounds of color onto his palette, screwing up his eyes to look at the waxy pears. "God! If you only, knew!" he said under his breath.

Gobby was washing a pair of socks in Elliott's dishpan and did not at once answer. When he at last said, "Knew what?" Elliott was lost in trying to feel like a pear swelling

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 juicily in a smooth yellow-pink skin, and only hummed a rising "Mmm?"

Christabel wrote in her Secret Journal, the day she read Elliott's brave farewell, and burned it. And for a long time her eyes filled with tears when she heard what they had called their tune, and had whistled to each other as a signal, although she never could be quite sure whether it was Nevin's "Narcissus" or "The Soldiers' Chorus" from "Faust."

Through veils of reticence she explained Elliott to Curtis, or tried to explain, for apparently he preferred to let Elliott remain a vague shadow.

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 I ever knew what love could be. I was like a prism, that's nothing—nothing, that is, except just a clearness and a pureness, I did keep those, I hope. And then the sun shines through the poor little prism and turns it into rainbow glory—and you're the sun! But he was only you're not listening to me, Curtis!"

"How can I listen to you when I'm looking at you? Do you know that you're the most beautiful girl in the world?"

"Darling! How strong you are!"

"How soon will you marry me? There's nothing to wait for."

And there wasn't. Aunt Deborah was well again and had offered Shady Lawn for the reception. Germantown was foaming with bloom and ready for the wedding. Bishop Lacombe would be off to Bar Harbor if they didn't hurry. Both families were delighted with the engagement. Christabel and Curtis would be in Paris on their wedding trip, so it would be foolish to spend much time on her

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 trousseau. And, after all, when a great love comes, why wait?

For this is love, Christabel thought, as she lay awake after the day she had been with Curtis to choose her engagement ring. On the darkness, as vividly as if they had been drawn with a sharp pencil and painted with clear water-colors, she saw details that she had not consciously noticed. The sweep of Panama-hat brim, the black hat-band, the black silk tie with silver-gray dots, and a tuck-in of shadow under the knot, the scarlet carnation. She had read somewhere that intense emotion gives clairvoyance, that, when exaltation passes, memory of some detail remains forever as a sign. I never even noticed that he was wearing a carnation, she thought. Yet there it was, printed on the darkness, frilled and pinked as a penwiper. This is real love, she thought, touching the enormous sapphire. But she couldn't see his face. There was the expensive hat, the beautifully fitting soft collar, the tie,

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 the carnation—and between them nothing, in spite of all her efforts.

The day drew near. In Mrs. Caine's bedroom Miss Plympton knelt to fit Christabel's wedding-gown.

"It's all wrong—everything's wrong! Look at this line! Just look at it! The whole idea was simplicity, not these disgusting little puckers and fullnesses!"

"I'm sorry, Miss Christabel. It was the way it was pinned up, and I thought we decided that was the way we wanted it."

"Don't work yourself up, darling. You're overtired."

Yes, she was tired. She shut her eyes and pressed her fingers to her temples.

"It will be all right."

"Mother, what is the use of saying it will be all right when it's all wrong?"

"If you could just hold still while I rip out the gathers, Miss Christabel, then we could drape it just the way you want."

Christabel gave a loud, exasperated sigh,

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 stood on one foot, stood on the other, put her hands to her head again.

"Sit down and rest a minute. You're worn out."

"While she's resting I'll run down and get the little nighties. They're just awfully dainty. I think you're going to love them!"

Christabel turned to Mrs. Caine as Miss Plympton scuttled from the room. "Well, mother, you see what a mess she's made of everything! I told you it was a mistake to have her."

"But, darling! She's made your clothes ever since your first little gingham dresses. It would have broken her heart to have anyone else make her Miss Christabel's wedding-dress. Besides, I think it looks all right, dear. And she needs the money dreadfully just now, with her mother breaking her ankle."

"Well, I'm sorry, but really! If you're seventy you oughtn't to climb trees."

"Darling, she just stood on a step-ladder to get some cherries for a pie"

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 "Well, it isn't my fault, and you act exactly as if it was—yes, you do, mother! And you know Miss Plympton absolutely revels in being a martyr. I wish I'd eloped, the way Curtis begged me to! Trousseau! What do I care for a trousseau? I'm just doing it to please you and the aunts."

"Darling"

"I've explained to Miss Plympton till I'm hoarse that what I want this dress to look like is a novice's robes—oh, that reminds me! Mother!"

"Yes, dearie?"

"What did Mr. Leach say when you telephoned about that choir-boy?"

"I—I'll just slip down and call him up this minute."

"Mother! Oh, I'm so sick of everybody promising to do things, and then nothing gets done unless I attend to it."

"I'll call him up this minute, darling. I tried to get him this morning, but the line was busy, and then I had to see the florist"

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 Left alone, Christabel lit a cigarette and sat smoking and frowning angrily, tapping a foot. Oh, she was tired! Her nerves were a nest of twittering sparrows. And everyone was being so stupid. This time, that should have been hushed, holy, tremulous with exquisite apprehension, was vulgarized by a stupid dressmaker getting things wrong, by the boy who sang the solos at Saint Mark's getting measles, by everyone being stupid and inconsiderate.

"Here's the nighties, dear!" Miss Plympton's eyes were swollen, her nose was pink and glazed. She had evidently taken the opportunity to have a cry. "Look—all eight of them. Mamma couldn't sleep last night, her ankle pained so, and I was sitting up, anyways, so I got them finished. Aren't they dainty?"

Christabel looked at one of the cobweb nightgowns, sighed, folded her lips.

"Isn't it all right, dear?"

"We don't seem to be having much luck, do we, Miss Plympton? I said ribbons under the net, and no lace. I gave you the lace to put

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 on the camisoles. Have you put it on all of the nightgowns?"

Miss Plympton's eyes swam, her nose glowed.

"Well, we can't do anything about it now." Christabel sighed again. "Never mind. But please let's try to get this dress right."

Miss Plympton sank on her knees and began pulling with shaking hands at the satin folds. Christabel looked at herself in the mirror. The effect really was exquisite, after all. What a contrast the two reflected figures were. Her young loveliness glowing out of satin pure as snow in moonlight, Miss Plympton with her mouth full of pins, her red nose, her spectacles. Christabel's eyes grew softer as she looked from her own white beauty to the dumpy figure kneeling beside her. Poor old maid, spending her life sewing other women's wedding-dresses! It would make a poignant poem. She said, gently:

"There, that's lovely, Miss Plympton. I knew you could fix it."

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 Miss Plympton blew her nose violently. Christabel suddenly put her hands—how white they looked—on either side of the red face, and, tilting it up, bent to kiss it.

"There! And you mustn't mind what I said. It wasn't I who was talking; it was my tiredness and nervousness."

How simple an understanding heart makes everything, she thought, feeling bathed in Miss Plympton's love. How wonderful if we could all go to each other, and say simply, I'm sorry. But it takes love and courage. I was right about the pure white for the satin, she thought, gazing into the mirror. Not cream, like Ernestine's wedding-dress, that had turned her into a gigantic charlotte russe, but just this purity—a Madonna in alabaster. Of course not everyone can stand pure white.

In the mirror she saw her mother, and cried:

"Look, mummy dear! Isn't it lovely now?"

"Lovely!" Mrs. Caine echoed. "Simply perfect! Mr. Leach says everything's all right, honey. He's gotten a boy from Saint Clem-

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 ent's for the solo. And a lot of new boxes have come. I told Jake to open them on the back porch. Curtis and Uncle Johnnie are looking at the presents."

"Uncle Johnnie! What's Uncle Johnnie doing here? There, that'll have to do, Miss Plympton."

"Wouldn't you like it just a crumb easier in the armholes?" asked Miss Plympton through pins, but Christabel was already struggling out of the satin folds.

She hurried into a dress and downstairs. From the landing window she caught a glimpse of Uncle Johnnie trotting to the gate, looking pleased with himself. Now what had he been saying, or not saying? She put the question to Curtis, wandering among clocks and dessert plates and cases of silver.

"What did you two find to talk about, dearest?"

"Why, I don't know exactly. Lots of things."

"Are you dead? Poor Curtis! Uncle John-

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 nie's a darling, of course, but he is old, and so He has ideas"

"I didn't notice that he had any. He seemed perfectly sensible to me."

"Did he? Do you know you're a very kind person? Oh, Curtis, it's a comfort to be with you! I'm exhausted! Things!" She touched the gold soup plates from a family of Carey cousins with sad scornfulness. "Let's promise each other never to become the slaves of things, material possessions, Curtis."

"All right, let's. I thought that was awfully nice, that part you showed me in your Journal, where you wrote about wedding presents, and how you'd rather be given the moon than a silver tray. That reminds me, I know if you don't like the tray, Cousin Bessie would much rather have you exchange it for something you do like."

"Dearest, I adore the tray! I only used it as a symbol. Don't you remember the other things I said, too—that I'd rather be given wild

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 raspberries than rubies, and a snowy branch of pine than an ermine cloak?"

"I'm going to get you an ermine cloak, all the same, or a sable one, if you'd rather."

"Oh, darling, really? Oh, you're so wonderful to me! How can I show you how much I love you?"

"By not getting all tired out. There's too much for you to do all the time. You must learn to let other people do things for you. I had no idea a wedding meant so much hullabaloo."

"And all so empty. I mean, what does anything matter except that you are mine and I am yours? These tribal laws, these sacrifices to tradition—they're all wrong. What do we care for laws, except the law of love? You know, Curtis, that what I would rather do would be simply to come home with you, across the fields, some evening when the frogs are piping and the west is pink, just you and I. You do know that, my lover, don't you?"

"I know, and I think it's wonderful of you,

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 darling, but still I guess we'd better go ahead and have some sort of ceremony. I mean, I was thinking about your mother and my mother. I suppose it would sort of worry them if we didn't. But I certainly am with you about thinking the simpler the better."

"Oh, so much better, dearest! If I considered myself—but, after all, does it matter so very much? If it's going to make the aunts and the dear little mothers happier to have the bishop and the choir-boys and lilies and organ thunder and all the old enchantments, does it matter so much what we want?"

"I don't believe you ever think of yourself."

"Oh, don't I! Don't I think about myself, and know I'm the happiest girl in the world? So happy that I feel wings fluttering—look and see if I haven't a pair of soap-bubble-colored wings!"

"I guess if you have wings they're angel wings."

"Darling! Not now! Some one's coming. Oh, Miss Plympton! Going home? You've

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 met Mr. Carey, haven't you? Curtis, this is our dear Miss Plympton, whom we couldn't live without. She gave us that lovely picklefork, you remember. Wait, Miss Plympton. Will you take these to your mother, with my love?" She took an armful of roses from a vase and thrust them dripping into Miss Plympton's summer-silk arms, against her summer-silk bosom. "And tell her she must hurry up and get well for my wedding, because I refuse to have it without her."

Miss Plympton's eyes filled with tears again. "I'm sorry I was so stupid," she whispered. "I've got the—you-knows—with me. I can change that lace all right."

"Goo-sie! You're not to touch them if it's the least bit of trouble." Christabel dropped a kiss lightly on the crumpled cheek.

"I think she's—an angel," said Miss Plympton to Curtis, with a sniff, and he answered:

"That makes it unanimous, Miss Plympton."

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followed Aunt Deborah up the aisle and into the front pew. Now, Deborah, hold your forehead with your f as if it were beginning to ache, and I'll look into my hat.

He glanced sideways to see when she would lift her head. Almost nothing there but a smell of age, eau de Cologne, and new kid gloves, wrapped in a black silk mantle and topped by a bonnet, trembling so that the bonnet's glass dangles made a tiny clashing. Poor Deborah, you're getting very old.

Up we come! Ann and Susannah were in the front pew, too, and behind were the younger girls, Eliza, Lydia and Hannah. And here was Amy, weeping and delighted. She knew, for all her tears, that her daughter was doing well for herself. The Carey family across the aisle made an impressive showing.

Here came the bishop, fresh and rosy as a

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 baby just out of its bath, his starched sleeves two white billows against the white billows of marguerites on the altar, and Dr. Marsh, well laundered, too, looking as if he were going to give some one a nice but solemn surprise. They moved into sunlight falling through stained glass, and were wrapped in celestial crazy quilts of colored light.

The bridegroom and best man.

The choir was rocking slowly by, splitting, filing into choir stalls.

Will she have her head down-drooping like a flower, Uncle Johnnie wondered, or bravely uplifted?

Bravely uplifted. Going into battle with all flags flying.

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 "What, Deborah?"

"I said, the blesséd child!"

Two little pages in green velvet carried her train. Curtis should have been in doublet and hose. He was the only one who looked out of, place. Nice of her to let him come. Or did she know he was there? She seemed completely detached.

They were moving toward the altar now. Kneeling. Green and purple flakes of glory slid over the bishop's bald head and flowed down the bride's veil and train. She'd like that, Uncle Johnnie thought.

a very young choir-boy sang, with his eyes rolled up. Which would win in a Looking Holy contest, he or Christabel? Uncle Johnnie wondered.

"that ye may so live together in this life, that in the world to come ye may have life everlasting." The bishop's words were

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 thick bubbles of honey. "Amen," the choir sang seven times.

For a while Uncle Johnnie let ladies tell him that it was a beautiful day, a beautiful wedding, that Christabel was a beautiful bride, that Shady Lawn was looking beautiful. Then, understanding the feelings of one of the little moss-green pages who was being sick behind a mock-orange bush, he went to a rustic summerhouse, out of the way of the crowd. It was occupied by a young man in a large soft collar, almost a fichu, Uncle Johnnie thought, eating lobster salad.

"I hope I'm not intruding."

The young man's mouth was too full for speech, but he made welcoming gestures with a fork held by a hand whose wrist was encircled by a silver-and-turquoise bangle, and Uncle Johnnie sat down and yawned. The other gave a final gulp.

"I couldn't stand watching them turn a sacrifice into a festival any more, so I came off here by myself. My God! This is the kind of

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 thing that makes a man want to get dead drunk!"

"We could make a start," said Uncle Johnnie as a waiter passed by the summerhouse with a tray full of glasses of punch. "No, I don't want any of that vegetable soup. Go and get a bottle of champagne and two glasses."

"You couldn't stand it, either?"

"No, I couldn't."

"What's she doing it for, that's what I want toknow? That exquisite girl throwing herself away."

"What's the matter with the groom, aside from his getting married?"

"Well, he's so evidently just a typical business man."

"Good family, rich."

"That would mean less than nothing to Christabel."

"Ah?"

The waiter's black face appeared in the doorway, framed in dangling sprays of roses. "Yas-

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 suh, yassuh, heah you ah, suh, all right suh? Thank you suh, thank you kindly suh!" The gentlemen buried their noses in spray.

"She's as near pure spirit as anyone I ever knew. Why, Christabel is almost a religion to the people who really know her."

"Indeed!"

"What is she doing this for? Did you notice her expression? White as death, and those shining eyes—there was a sort of tragic radiance about her. You know she looked more like a nun than a bride, the way she wore her veil like a wimple, and carried that one Madonna lily. All the time I kept feeling that what was really happening was that she was taking the veil. I kept thinking, what is that man doing there?"

"That was rather the effect. Let me fill your glass."

"Thank you. Salut! The sunlight coming through the leaves turns your face a very interesting green, sir. I should like to paint it."

"Ah, you're a painter?"

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 "Well, yes, although my work isn't what the Philistine means when he says painting. In fact, I don't confine myself to paint. I use any medium that I feel will express my meaning most truly. And the thing I try to do is, I try to escape from convention into pure abstraction. I'm not interested in your mustache, for instance, or your nose, but in your essential personality. But I don't want to talk about myself."

"Not at all."

"I feel that convention means death to art, emotion, spirit. Thank you. Salut! Shoo! How these roses attract the bees! Speaking of convention, don't you agree with me that it's wonderful for a girl like Christabel to have escaped so completely from the death in life of the conventions she was brought up in?"

"You feel that?"

"Oh, absolutely." He flapped a hand at a bee. "You know there's no one in her family who understands her—love, yes, she must be given that wherever she goes, I think, but un-

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 derstanding, no! It almost killed her to get away from them. She used to tell us about it. Very sweetly and understandingly, but you could tell what she'd been through. And now that I've seen it all for myself, I can realize what a hell her life here must have been to her."

"As bad as all that? . . . I don't think that kind stings."

"Don't you? It looks terribly angry. Just watch it worrying that rose! What were we saying? Oh, Christabel! Well, just look around you, sir! Just feel the atmosphere. But she did get out into the light and air, and yet now of her own free will she's going back into darkness like—like—Persephone, and nobody's stopping her. When I looked at the priests and the flowers, and Christabel with her white face, I could think of just one word. Sacrifice."

I thought of that word, too, Uncle Johnnie said to himself. There was also the bridegroom's red face. Red as a rose was he. I

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 shall have to lend this young man my handkerchief in a minute.

"Maybe she can take care of herself," he added aloud.

"I know her as perhaps you don't, sir."

"I think that's highly probable."

They finished the champagne in a silence broken by the roaring of the bees, and presently by distant shouts.

"They must be going away."

The victoria was at the door, with Deborah's new coachman, beaming red face and big white wedding-favor. "So pretty and touching to see how the old family servants adore her!" Uncle Johnnie heard a strange lady say reverently.

Around the front steps people were calling, laughing, their hands full of rice. But when Christabel came slowly out, more nunlike than ever in pale gray, her face whitely, stilly shining, hands fell, rice dribbled to the ground.

"Good-by, good-by! Good-by, Gobby dear. Good-by, dear Uncle Johnnie."

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 If I'd let out a cloud of sulphur and switched a tail at him he couldn't have been more scared, thought Uncle Johnnie, looking at the place from which the young man had vanished.

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you like to play bridge with the Prestons, Christabel?"

"Curtis darling! Play bridge, with the sea and the sky looking like this?"

"Well, what would you like to do?"

"Dearest, must we do something all the time? Can't we just be?"

So for a few minutes they just were. How blue the sea is! she thought. How utterly it satisfies me! She looked toward Curtis to see if he were drinking it in, too. His eyes were shut, his mouth a little open.

Why was I such a fool as to think there could never be anything for me but loneliness? What is life, anyway, but just being alone, never really touching each other, except in those rare moments when a shared beauty, a shared reality, opens the prison doors? How I long to share with him this rapture of really

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 seeing the blue of sea and sky. And here he is, beside me—asleep.

It seemed almost a symbol.

How Elliott would have gloried in this light, this benediction of color.

I am utterly lonely, I might as well admit it, she thought, tears stinging into her eyes. In this shipful of people I am all alone.

Of course they made a fuss about her. People always did, over anyone who was well known. And although she had begged Curtis not to tell anyone she was Christabel Caine, he was so proud of her he couldn't resist bragging, and he had given away a dozen copies of Carnation Flower already. He must have brought half a trunkful. It was a little ridiculous, like a drummer giving away free samples. There was something about Curtis—not an insensitiveness, exactly

She smiled at the Misses White, trotting past, with their arms full of bags, cushions, Cathedral Towns of England, Châteaux of Old France, My Trip Abroad, and a bristle of

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 knitting-needles and fountain pens. Poor little old maids, so excited at meeting a writer. Poor little trippers, brave little Christopher Columbuses! She must ask them to tea in London, if she had time. They would be thrilled.

Louis Brown strolled by, lifting his eyebrows and thrusting out his lower lip as he looked from sleeping Curtis to her, and she smiled, lifted her eyebrows, too, drifted her hands through the air. A feeling of being understood warmed her heart. But I must keep him from caring too much, she thought. He mustn't be hurt—and neither must my Curtis. She turned her eyes, that had followed Louis along the deck, to her husband.

He really did look silly. She dropped a book with a bang, and he struggled up with a yawn that was almost a scream.

"Why don't you go and get into a bridge game, Curtis?"

"Well, I don't like to leave you."

"I want to be alone with the sea. I want to

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 look at it until there isn't any me left, until there isn't anything left but blueness."

"Sure you won't be lonely?"

She smiled at him, and kissed her finger tips. He is just a grown-up little boy, eager to get to his toys. My grown-up little boy, who adores me so that it almost breaks my heart. When he turned to look back at her from the smoke-room door she smiled again, but she saw him through tears that splintered the world into crystals.

Loneliness

Courage, child. Wrap the sky around you, comfort yourself with the sea.

Perhaps Louis would be coming back.

But the deck remained deserted, and the dazzle of sun on water made her blink. Getting up to pull her chair around, she could look into a smoke-room window. The interior, its darkness swimming with scarlet balls to her sun-dazzled eyes, slowly revealed Curtis with his back to her, awake and lively enough now, with the Prestons, and Mrs. Sloane, who chose

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 that moment to answer some remark of his with a friendly shove and shout of laughter.

Why did he marry me? Christabel asked herself, sinking into her chair. If that's what he wants, why did he take me away from the people I love, the people who love me? Suppose I should go overboard, how much would he really care? He would be sorry, of course, and wear correct mourning, and give a stained glass window to the church where we were married—Christabel, dearly beloved wife of Curtis Carey—and then he would play bridge with Mrs. Sloane.

The current volume of her Secret Journal lay on the deck by her chair. She picked it up and began to write.

"What peace it would be to say, I am too tired to go on. To let my body enter the sea, and sink, down, down, past goggling fish with drifting films of tail, past ribbons of ruffled, purple and brown"

People were coming out from their afternoon naps. With her eyes on the words that

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 streamed from her pen she felt them going by, felt them looking at her. "—writing—" she heard them murmur to each other respectfully. "—writing." They think I have more than my share, she told herself. They think I am young, beautiful, rich, brilliant, beloved—happy. They envy me.

If they only knew!

"To sink slowly, slowly, down to the trees of white and rose-red coral massed with bubbles, to the sprays of pearl, to drift and turn until my bones were white and delicate, covered with small rose-pink shells and silver bubbles, drifting and turning forever in that still depth of peace."

A group of skirts and trousers surrounded her chair. People! When all she wanted was to be alone. "Peace" she wrote again, and rose from the depths of the sea.

"Pardon us for interrupting"

"What is probably a masterpiece in the making!"

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 "We've come to ask a very, very great favor."

She felt her eyes and mouth as round as an astonished child's, she touched her bosom delicately with outspread fingers.

"A favor? Of me?"

"We've been chosen as a committee to beg, bribe, or otherwise cajole you into giving a reading from your poems for the edification and delight of your fellow passengers."

"Please say you will!"

"Everyone wants to hear you!"

"We won't take no for an answer."

"Oh, thank you for wanting me to—but I can't! No, I can't!"

"Oh, please!"

"I tremble to think of the fate of the committee if it ventures to withdraw without your promise."

"Oh, but if you only knew how it terrifies me! No, no, I really can't!"

"Just think of the pleasure you'll be giving."

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 "You can't refuse when everyone wants so much to hear you."

"May I put in a special plea for 'Out where the long sea road Follows the curve of the cliff'?"

"Oh yes, exquisite!"

"And please, please, pretty-please, some of those darling kiddie poems!"

Tender assenting groans.

No longer the lonely cold depths of the sea. She rocked gently in the warm sun. They were being too kind, she told them, they were making too much of a fuss over her little songs. She thanked them for it, she loved them for it—but, no.

"Don't say that. Think it over and tell us this evening."

I can't do it, she thought, going down the stateroom. To get up and read in front of all those people! They don't realize how a thing like that drains you, if you're sensitive enough to have written the poems in the first place.

Yet if I have been given something precious,

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 have I any right not to share it? Isn't this sacrifice of pouring forth, part of my gift and my burden? She opened the closet door and looked absently at her dresses.

If she did read to them, what poems would she choose?

She tried it softly, watching herself in the long mirror. And as she spoke she became a lilac bush, delicate and cool. Elliott had said once that he must feel like what he was painting, and ever since then she had realized that she, too, must be what she created—she must be lilac, the sea wind crying, falling rain. She must be everything.

She was in his studio again, curled up in the window seat, hearing his words. She saw his old painting-shirt open at the throat, the fringe of hair she loved to run her finger under, vermilion spikes on table and canvas, for he had been feeling like red-hot pokers when he spoke.

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 "Dear Elliott!" she whispered, leaning against the closet door. Then she caught her breath, flung her head back bravely. Courage, child

There hung a golden gown she had never worn. It reminded her of something Louis Brown had said last night. "I'm the only one who's on to you. Everyone else thinks you're a little golden queen, but I know you're just a ridiculous beautiful child who has learned, God knows how, to cast a spell."

Smiling, she slipped into the gown. She put on her pearls, patted a film of powder over her face, and interestedly did a little work with her eyebrow pencil. Her white face and shadowed eyes made her feel frail and exquisite. She moved her white hands against her golden gown.

She heard Curtis talking to the steward, and had just time to scramble out of her dress before he came in.

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 She threw her arms around him, she loved him and silently forgave him.

"Well, what's new?"

If only he wouldn't always greet her that way!

"Nothing—oh, they want me to give a reading of my poems."

"Fine!"

"Fine? I don't know what you mean. I hate the idea. Anything like that leaves me utterly spent."

"Oh, you'll enjoy it."

She felt ready to burst. We are utter strangers, she thought, as they dressed for dinner, getting into each other's way. He thinks I like getting up and having everybody look at me, when it kills me—when I can only bear it because I have something real, something true, something of myself to give them. It was a good thing she hadn't worn the golden gown before. A little golden queen. She heard herself speaking exquisite words, she saw Louis Brown's dark face in the audience. White

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 lilac, delicate and cool. And running along with her thoughts was Curtis's voice, telling her what bad hands he had held, and what nice women Mrs. Preston and Zita Sloane were.

He had gone to get cigarettes after dinner, when Louis Brown carried her off to look at the stars. Standing by the rail, she felt the music from the distant orchestra, the long rays of light, her own voice, exquisite and sad, trailing out from the ship, delicate tendrils that found only darkness to cling to. All up her arm she felt how Louis wanted to cover her hand, lying white on the rail, with his.

And this moment of ours—this moment—already is the past.

She could hear him breathing hard through his nose. It was time she said something.

"Sometimes I think I'd like to go over the side of the ship, and just sink down into peace. Think of what you'd go drifting through—red and white coral trees all covered with silver bubbles, and ruffled ribbons of seaweed, and the ocean to rock you to sleep. Wouldn't you

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 like to drift in the dim green light forever, with no more restlessness?"

He continued to breathe hard through his nose.

"Wouldn't you, Louis?"

"I haven't been listening to you. How can I hear you when I'm looking at you?"

Oh, my poor dear, you mustn't love me so, she thought. She put one cool finger tip against his lips.

"Ironical, our meeting on your wedding trip, isn't it?" he asked. And although he had recovered his usual tone of light bitterness, she felt his love pouring over her. It made her love Curtis, who at that moment joined them, made her greet him radiantly, tenderly, putting her hand through his arm, her eyes on Louis.

All through dinner Christabel's voice had come to Curtis from far away, her eyes had been a wounded deer's, and afterward she had disappeared. He had been looking for her all evening. Somehow he must make up to her

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 for having hurt her, though what he had done he didn't know. She was so sensitive, so tender-hearted, that he was always putting his foot in it, when he only wanted to make her happy. Perhaps it's just the artistic temperament, he thought.

This afternoon he had had a struggle to keep awake. Two cocktails before lunch, a bottle of stout, and the sun on the waves had caused an agonizing struggle, followed by oblivion, but something had made him sit up with a jerk, had made the rail, the life-preserver, his own cocked-up feet swim back into their places, before Christabel noticed that he had dozed off, he was almost sure. So she couldn't have been hurt by that, or by his playing bridge, for she had suggested it.

It had been a good game. He thought of Zita, and how she had laughed at his jokes and looked at him as he lit her cigarette. He seemed to be able to please some women. He didn't know what was the matter with Christabel.

He found her with Mr. Brown, he insolently

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 close, as usual. Christabel drew away from him and put her arm through Curtis's, saying that Mr. Brown was showing her the stars. That is Ursa Major, said Mr. Brown, and Curtis said, the only constellation he could recognize was the good old Dipper. And Christabel's aid the floor of heaven was thick inlaid with patines of bright gold. A respectful silence followed this, and then Mr. Brown said he would hope to see them later, and left.

"Well! Ive been looking all over the ship for you!" said Curtis.

"Darling, you mustn't be jealous."

"Jealous! Of that?"

She rubbed her cheek against his sleeve. "Ooh, I'm so glad you've come! You've left me pretty much alone today." She lifted his hand and left a kiss in the palm. She's forgiving me, he thought, with mixed relief and indignation, for he had meant to forgive her.

"I don't know what's been the matter, Christabel. I knew I was in Dutch some way."

"Ridiculous boy!"

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 "It wasn't because I played bridge, was it?"

She was silent. It was, he thought, and said aloud:

"But, Christabel, you said"

"Said? Said? Curtis, don't you know there's a language deeper than words, that the heart understands?"

"But I"

"I wasn't going to tell you. I wasn't going ever to let you know!"

"But"

"But, oh, Curtis, you hurt me so this afternoon! I was so lonely I wanted to die!"

"But you said"

"I didn't want you to stay with me if you wanted to be with them. If you would rather be with Mrs. Preston and that Mrs. Sloane, I want you to be with them."

"But I asked you"

"Only don't expect me to come, too, because they make a spiritual atmosphere that I simply can't—breathe in."

"Oh, now, what's the matter with them?"

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 "So material—so self-centered."

"But Zita Sloane's nice-looking and polite"

"Curtis, she's just cheap. Bracelets like a Fiji Islander, and powder enough on her nose to make an avalanche. I don't care for myself, but I'm so ashamed for you, to see you taken in by a type like that."

She's really jealous, he thought, in a pleased glow. She loves me even more than I realized. "I can't remember what she looks like," he said. "When I look at you I can't remember what anyone else looks like."

She drew close to him again.

"And this evening I waited for you and I waited for you, and you didn't come! I didn't want to be sharing this starlight with him. I wanted you!"

"But, my darling, I was hunting for you everywhere." And he thought, I must never leave her unless I absolutely have to.

"I wanted you so!"

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 How she loves me, he thought, lifting her fingers to kiss.

"Isn't it beautiful, sailing into the night? It's like coming home again, home into the heart of God."

"It certainly is."

That was inadequate. He felt unworthy of his wonderful girl, who had given herself to him so completely. And as they stood in silence he was ashamed of himself for suddenly thinking how much he would like a whisky and soda and a cheese sandwich. He managed to get his wrist watch into the light without her noticing. Almost smoke-room closing time. But somehow he couldn't mention it to Christabel.

Her face was lifted to the stars, a long end of the white veil she had bound around her silky head molded itself to his features.

"We're very close at times like this, aren't we, my husband?"

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motor car, with a coronet on the door and a footman beside the chauffeur, purred toward Knightsbridge, taking Christabel and Curtis to their hotel, from the dinner Lady Dickery had given in their honor.

"It's just like Caroline not to let us take a taxi," Curtis said. "She never can do enough for people. Even when she was a little girl she was always giving away everything. She took off some coral beads Aunt Ethel gave her, I remember once, and gave them to a little darky; they couldn't stop her. They never could make her mind, Ma'm'selle or Fräulein or any of them. I remember her sailing a new hat in a muddy brook, and she used to buy balloons just to sit on and pop, and hide under the table in her nightgown when Aunt Ethel was giving a dinner. The homeliest little mug, with spectacles and big front teeth, and language—boy! But everyone was crazy about her, just the way

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 they are now. Well, you can see for yourself why they would be, she's always been so warm-hearted and generous."

Yes, so generous! Christabel thought, drawing away from him into her corner. All she wants is to give, give, give, to be the source of blessings, like God! Giving, and letting everybody know she's giving. Grabbing the center of the stage all evening!

"Don't you think she's nice?"

There was a little silence before Christabel answered, "Very nice." And after another silence, "But"

"But what?"

"Oh, nothing. Only it's strange, isn't it, that all these years in England haven't made her voice gentler?" She listened to her own voice, that sounded even more gentle and musical than usual, as she remembered hearing through the noise of the big dinner party how Caroline screamed at the sight of herself in a Watteau shepherdess hat, how Dickery was eating nothing but pineapples because of his fat stomach.

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 "Oh, well, she always did speak out. She wants us to come down to Clouds next week—did she ask you? You'll be crazy about it. There's a moat and a ghost and a secret passage, and gardens enough even for you. I told her what a gardener you were, and she's crazy to show you the gardens. There's some famous old clipped yew, too—I don't know much about it, but it's in all the books. And they're sure to have interesting people. I think it would be fun. Don't you?"

"Of course we'll go if you want to, Curtis."

"But don't you want to? You'd enjoy it, Christabel."

"I suppose I could look at the clipped yew while the interesting people amused each other."

"Why?"

"I've never in my life been treated the way I was tonight, Curtis! I wouldn't treat a criminal the way I was treated!"

"Why, I"

"I suppose it's fashionable not to introduce

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 people and talk across them about things they can't possibly understand. Well, if it is, I don't want to be fashionable! I hate people who are so self-centered and conceited!"

"Why, darling! I thought you were having such a good time!"

She bit her lip and turned her head away.

"I thought you'd be crazy about Caroline! And she wants to do so much for us. She wants us to come to her later for the hunting. Wait till you see the way that woman rides! Gosh! I'd love to get some hunting!"

"The cruelty—little bright-eyed furry creatures—it's sickening!" Christabel shuddered, pulling her ermine wrap closer about her.

There was another silence before Curtis's anxious voice asked, "Is your head worse, darling?"

"My head?" she almost questioned, before she remembered that was the reason she had given for not going on to a dance with the others, as Curtis wanted to. She sighed, turned to him with a brave little smile, let a snowflake

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 hand fall into his. But in their room, when Curtis began again about how he would like to go to Clouds, she burst into tears.

"Why, Christabel!"

She could have stopped, but she made herself go on, remembering shell-pink Lady Somebody or other, pointed out to her by Lord Dickery as the most beautiful woman in London, pug-nosed Princess de Something, who had everybody laughing. And that fat old duchess with her patronizing inflections, saying, when Christabel had finally made her understand that she was a writer: "Oh, indeed! A very pleasant hobby, no doubt." Above all, hideous loudvoiced Caroline, showing-off, dominating. I hate her, Christabel thought, not able now to stop her sobs. Oh, I'm so homesick, so homesick! They love me at home; they understand me. I want my own darling mother

She grew quieter at last, drinking the water that Curtis brought, and then lying exhausted in his arms. Her heart ached for herself, so sensitive and fragile.

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 "Darling, we won't go to Clouds. We won't do anything you don't want to do."

"We will go to Clouds! You must, to show you've forgiven me for being so silly—darling, dearest Curtis!" She pressed her tear-wet cheek against his as his arms tightened around her.

When she woke next morning Curtis had gone out. Her maid drew her bath and ordered her breakfast. A haystack of flowers had come from Caroline Dickery, with a note hoping that her head was better. Christabel made a face as she read it, and tore it into bits. On one bit a coronet was left intact, and she put it into her book as a marker. How childish the British were, with all their little symbols of this and that, dressing up and saying, now I am important. She pulled the paper out so the coronet showed, and looked thoughtfully at pearls and strawberry leaves.

"Ring for some vases, Minnie," she said. And when the hotel maid was bringing them in, and Minnie was shaking out the dewy

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 tangle, she added: "They're so lovely and fresh, I suppose Lady Dickery has them sent up from her country place."

The hotel maid looked impressed by Lady Dickery's name. Amusing! Christabel thought. The English certainly are snobs.

She enjoyed a peach with a fluff of cotton wool still clinging to it, eggs, bacon, toast and jam, and although the coffee wasn't much, she managed three cups. Then she lay among her pillows, watching the lace slide back from her white lifted arms. She could see herself in two mirrors, and see repeated trunks, two other Minnies in small pleated black aprons, masses of flowers foaming and spraying. And suddenly she thought, if only Elliott could see me now!

Minnie went out with the gown Christabel had worn last night a crystal waterfall over her arm. She saw herself as she must have looked in it, coming down the marble staircase; she heard again the footmen echoing her name. Of all the affected ways of living!

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 Again she thought of Elliott. He would have really seen her in that gown, like a water-nymph in drops of bright water. Curtis had never even mentioned it.

In her mind she began to compose a letter to Elliott. Perhaps it would open old wounds too cruelly. But if she wrote to Boyd, she could depend on Elliott's seeing it. She got her portfolio.

"Curtis's cousin, Lady Dickery, gave a simply huge dinner for us last night," she wrote. "The guests were really nothing compared with the grandeur of the footmen, about a million of them, all with powdered hair, but they did the best they could for people who were only Dukes and Duchesses and Prime Ministers and such. Caroline Dickery is the kind of person you generally see pictures of in The Sketch or The Tatler, with a pull-on hat and large capable feet and a terrier, labeled 'Lady Dickery and Friend,' but last night she had diamonds every place but the tip of her nose, and so had all the other women, tiaras and every-

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 thing—and diplomats all done up with blue ribbons—and—little me the center of it all!

"It's like a Fairy Tale. And it's hard work I have to keep the chuckles back when I think of myself in my old smock dining on an apple and a bun, with the coffee-pot bubbling on the gas ring, and then catch a glimpse of this new Christabel dressed in crystal and cloth of silver, going in to dinner on a Noble Arm, and I wonder, when Midnight strikes, will Cinderella be back in her old smock and go running out through rows of 'stonished flunkies? And then Cinderella's heart gives a leap as she thinks—if she could! But she can't. Her Rolls-Royce doesn't change into a pumpkin when Midnight strikes, her crystal gown doesn't change into the old smock, and it's only her Heart can come Home.

"I don't mean that, Boyd dear. I'm a very happy Child. But—but—I do get homesick, I do miss my friends.

"Do you ever see Elliott? I think of him so often.

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 "Caroline wants us to come to Clouds (their wonderful old country seat) for a house party, but I'm awfully afraid my Curtis isn't going to let me go, as I haven't been very well (I'm writing this in bed, surrounded by flowers and notes and invitations—if my head isn't turned forever it won't be the fault of all these kind, kind people). There's nothing really the matter with me, but my big boy is so strong himself that he seems to think I'm a Delicate Child made of Spun Glass and Thistledown, and spoils me accordingly. He's a Sweet Person, and it isn't his fault that he doesn't love to go adventuring, the way we do, so that I've had to steal off by my own little lonely self to"

Todo what? What were some of the things she was going to do as soon as she had a minute? Ride on a bus-top, have tea at an A. B. C. "—ride on a Bus, high up in the air over the Bobbies with their faces like scarlet peonies, and the costers' patient little gray donkeys, and have tea and Bath buns at an

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 A. B. C.—such fun! Only—I do want some one to Play With!"

That would tell them she was still their Christabel, simple and unspoiled. And really, she could hardly wait to do those things.

Curtis had left a note saying he would be back at twelve, and it was quarter to. She finished her letter, got up, and drew the curtains close together. She was lying in the dark when he opened the door cautiously; and lifted a drooping hand to greet him.

"How are you, darling?"

"I'm all right, dearest. Kiss me."

"You're not all right, or you wouldn't have the room dark. Couldn't you eat something if I ordered it? A little soup? Some grapes?"

She shook her head.

"I'm going to get a doctor."

"Curtis, my darling, I'm all right! Just—lazy."

"You're a little liar, that's what you are. You sound as weak as a drowned kitten."

She powdered her nose and put on her pearls

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 while Curtis was getting the doctor, a delightful man with spats and a monocle. She gave him one of Caroline's carnations for his buttonhole, and he agreed with her that she had better get out of London if she had felt ill and depressed ever since she arrived.

"Dear boy, you mustn't worry so!" she told Curtis, smoothing the lines from his forehead with gentle finger tips. "It's just that London doesn't suit me."

"Well, how about going down to Caroline's? The country, and quiet, and everything?"

"I asked him, but he was awfully down on the idea, the excitement of a big party and all. I'm so apologetic! But you go, darling! I'll be all right! I'll just go quietly somewhere. You go without me! Please!"

"Where does he think you ought to go? Where would you like to?"

"I don't care. Anywhere—anywhere, so long as it's with you! Somewhere where it will be just us alone, darling."

So they went to Paris.

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a Paris Christabel had not known before, under the Tomb of Napoleon Louvre Now Girls chaperonage of Edith Johnson Plummer. After London it seemed like heaven, at first. It was enough just to have salad mean brittle ice-green frills of lettuce and dark needles of chopped chives instead of a stew of tinned fruits; just to pour crystals of Jasmin, Giroflée Jaune, L'Heure Exquire, into her baths; to have hot golden café au lait and flaky croissants instead of mud and water and cold toast; to get into a taxi with her arms full of packages and say "The Ritz." She brought back packages, she had them sent, their rooms rattled with tissue paper as Minnie unpacked boxes. "When I was here before I bought a chemise and nightie to match, and thought I had Paris lingerie!" she told Curtis with amused tenderness for the child she had been, while the waiter tried to find room for their

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 breakfast tray among drifts of silk and chiffon, apricot, ivory, and mauve.

But after a while she grew restless. Perhaps we ought to see other people, she thought, looking through the Herald to see if she could find any names she knew. We mustn't let our happiness make us selfish.

And what was the use of all her new gowns if there was no one to show them to? Curtis never noticed what she had on, unless she called his attention to it, and even with her generous Curtis it was just as well not to call attention to too many all at once, for when you are a type that demands special creations, dresses are expensive. Their first misunderstanding had come when he had seen the bill for the seven picture gowns. And after he had said that he wanted to spend his whole life in making her happy! She had been so hurt that he had given her a sapphire bracelet next day. She twisted it on her wrist now. Dark blue fire on snow.

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 she said to herself, letting it slip up her arm, down over her hand. Then she lifted it to her lips, whispering: "And kissed again with tears!"

Curtis was out looking up a business connection, and she was bored and lonely. She didn't want to write, she didn't want to read, she didn't want to stay indoors, and yet she could think of nothing she wanted to go shopping for. Still, in Paris one could always buy gloves.

As she stepped out of the lift she saw Gobby Witherspoon.

"Gobby!"

"For Heaven's sake! Christabel!"

Darling Gobby! Dear, faithful, loving Gobby! She let her hands lie in his.

"How did you know I was here? And how did you know that this afternoon, of all afternoons, I needed you?"

"My subconscious must have gotten a message, because my conscious certainly thought you were still in London."

"And you felt me here so strongly that you

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 came to me! My dear, do you know that touches something very deep?"

They looked at each other deeply. And then her mood changed. She clapped her hands.

"Now can you play with me a little while, Gobby? I'm all alone this afternoon. Curtis had other things to do. Can't we just wander about like a couple of children on a holiday, and be utterly silly and happy?"

"I'd love to, but"

"Perhaps you have an engagement?"

"Oh no! But—if you'll just excuse me one minute—I"

"Certainly, Gobby."

"I—well, you see my garter broke, and I came in to fix it"

He really is a little absurd, she thought, waiting for him. Subconsciousness, indeed! Sometimes she couldn't help feeling that he wasn't as real a person as he might be, that he was inclined to pose. But her heart warmed to him again as he came back, rather pink, from fixing his garter.

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 "Let's go somewhere away from the shops, Gobby. I'm sick of them. How horrid of me to say that! When my Curtis has been so generous, so much too generous to me! But I'm so tired of being dressed up like a big doll—I want to be a woman, a breathing, feeling woman, not a beautiful doll that opens and shuts her eyes and wears pretty clothes."

"Aren't you happy, Christabel?"

"Oh yes, I suppose so. At least—is anyone happy? Oh, what's the use of not being honest with you, Gobby? You, being you, would know, no matter what I told you. I'm happy this afternoon, anyway! Look at those big fern-fringed willow baskets full of snails! Look at those apples with flowers and stars—what do they do, paste paper patterns on them before they're ripe? I'd rather have that pink-and-yellow apple with the pale green hearts on it than all the jewels in the Rue de la Paix."

"You haven't changed, thank God!"

"Haven't I, Gobby? I feel as if I had. I wouldn't say this to anyone in the world but

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 you, but I feel changed to the depths of my soul. But let's not talk about me; let's talk about you. Oh, Gobby dear, this is heaven! My big boy loves the restaurants that everybody goes to, and the theaters, places where you meet every American in Paris! And I can't let him know that I don't enjoy them. I put on my pretty new dresses, and I try to pretend I'm loving it all as much as he is. That's what a woman has to learn, through love and pity, to pretend she's happy doing whatever her man wants to do. But men don't pretend—they're like children that way, I think. Curtis is a sweet person, but he just couldn't understand the thrill of playing around like this, and why I love it so. Gobby! My dear! A street fair!"

"What shall I buy you? I want to buy you something."

"Buy me that gingerbread pig named René—no, no, this one named Louis—and I'll keep it forever to remember you by."

They looked at strong men and white mice,

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 and Gobby modestly averted his eyes from four respectable Parisians, two beards, two black silk dresses, squeezed into a giant pot-de-chambre on the merry-go-round, answering with shrill screams the light-hearted remarks of bystanding friends. Then, leaving the fair, they paused for refreshments outside a cafe.

"An aperitif for me, please."

"Deux aperitifs—oh! non, un moment! Un aperitif pour madame et une tasse de chocolat pour moi."

"Thank you, sir. Any pastry?"

"Oh, oui, pâtisserie assortt. I'm crazy about that frock, Christabel, that little glimpse of lemon-yellow sash is heavenly with the green, but you mustn't wear that hat with it, my dear! The color's all right, but the line isn't you. I'll have to take you to a wonderful place where they make hats on your head. Are you sure you aren't just being unselfish, leaving that coffee éclair for me?"

"It's being a wonderful afternoon, Gobby! It's giving me fresh courage to go on with."

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 "I wish you were happier."

"Is it so very important? And I have been happy this afternoon, thanks to you! But I don't want to talk about me—you're such an understanding person you lead me astray. Tell me about yourself. Have you seen Elliott since—I?"

"I went to see him the day after your wedding. I wonder if I ought to tell you about it? Of course I don't have to ask you never to breathe a word to a soul."

"Of course not, Gobby!"

"Well, I thought he'd be pretty low—you know—so I hurried down from the train; I thought maybe I could sort of cheer him up or something, well, not exactly cheer him up, but, anyway, I went down, and of course I went in without knocking, as usual—don't ever tell!"

"Gobby, don't you know me?"

"Well, he was standing there with a face like death, and holding a blue bottle. I didn't stop to speak, even; I just ran at him and dashed it out of his hand and it smashed to the

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 floor. I saw a piece of the bottle; it had a skull and cross-bones on it!"

"Oh, Gobby! Oh, my poor, poor Elliott! Thank God you got there in time!"

"Of course I pretended it was an accident. I think I said I was trying to catch a moth or something, and that my foot slipped. And he was wonderful, Christabel, the way he pulled himself together. You'd have been proud of him. He got off some story about developing some photographs and having to have acids and things."

"Oh, what courage! What a gallant lie!"

"Of course he did have a lot of other bottles and powders and things there. He might have been telling the truth."

"Oh no, Gobby, you don't know Elliott if you think that. Don't you see, it was to make it seem natural? He knew I would blame myself, and he didn't want to hurt me. Oh, my poor, poor boy, what he must have suffered! I don't know whether this makes me feel most sad or most proud!"

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 "Well, then we wiped up the mess, and then I didn't like to leave him, so I got him to come to the Zoo with me. I was awfully glad I thought of it; it seemed to sort of take his mind off things. He was simply crazy about the blue-bottomed mandril. I was, too. Did you ever see it? I never saw such a combination of repulsiveness and beauty; it made my blood run cold. This huge baboon, with teeny little eyes, like a pig, and bright blue-and-red striped cheeks that look as if they'd been flayed, and the most horrible scarlet lips showing through a beard, like the world's worst nightmare of King Edward the Seventh, and then this exquisite behind—my dear, such colors!"

"Did Elliott?"

"Wait till I tell you—cerulean blue and deep rose and mauve, melting into each other. Elliott was crazy to paint him; in fact, he was just starting when I left New York."

"He is going on, then? Oh, the gallant gentleman!"

She pressed her hands together to stop their

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 trembling. Her body trembled with love and pity because Elliott had been ready to kill himself when she had married some one else, with pride because he had the courage to live so that she should not be hurt. How he must have loved her! More, even, than she had guessed. She put her hand to her throat, suddenly breathless. "What a beauty!" Gobby exclaimed, noticing her sapphire bracelet.

She came back from the real world of intense feeling to the dream world of the sapphire bracelet, Gobby, the stack of franc-marked saucers. Already the lamps were printing shadow plane-leaves on the sidewalk. She must go back to Curtis.

"You've saved my life, my dear," she told Gobby as he left her at the Ritz. "And since you've done so much for me, will you do one thing more? Will you forget everything I've said, and just remember, Christabel is happy?"

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Oh, Day of Shining Hours!" Christabel wrote in her Secret Journal. "For this day My Man and I came home to

And the sun shone, and the winds blew, and the very sparrows in the gutter put on a glory.

"Curtis carried me in over the doorstep, according to the old Gaelic custom of Bringing Home the Bride"

She paused, remembering how embarrassed Curtis had been, with Smedley opening the door, and Bates following with their bags. He had carried her in, as she suggested—he, dear boy, had never heard of the old custom—but his face had been scarlet. It had hurt her deeply that he could care, at such a time, for what servants might be thinking, but now she could smile as she sighed. That was the very fabric of a woman's love for a man—under-

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 standing, forgiveness, and always that hidden, half-sad laughter at the little boy who would never grow up.

"And inside was all Beauty and Blessedness, and Himself and I sat by Our Own Fireside and Broke Bread together before going up Our Very Own Stairs (another old custom, Journal)"

She pulled a piece of paper toward her, and wrote, while she thought of it, "Tell Mrs. What's-her-name must get some other kind of tea," and then went on in the Journal.

"And now it is going, this Bright and Blessed Day—how can I bear to let it go? God Bless the Days to Come, and Our Home, and Us, and our Living and our Loving, our Work and our Play, and let Peace and Happiness dwell in this House Forever!"

She had happiness at first. She loved each morning, her room fresh from just-closed windows, warm from the just-lit fire, her soft bed, her breakfast tray with thin porcelain, hot coffee, mail full of invitations. She loved put-

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 ting on her new clothes and going out in her bottle-green town car to buy something for the house—a Coromandel screen, a rose-quartz Kwan-Yin, Goddess of Mercy. It made her happy to feel that through her Curtis's money, that might have been just so many sordid dollars, was being transmuted into beauty, into food for the spirit. And her new preoccupations did not make her thoughtless of others. She bought souvenirs for all the people she had not had time to remember when she was abroad—bags and scarfs for the aunts, an English pipe for Uncle Johnnie, a collar that probably really had come from Paris, for Katie Sullivan. They would never know the difference.

The dinners given in her honor by the Careys' friends were pleasant, but most of the luncheons bored her. Self-centered women, full of their own affairs. And what affairs! What shallow, surface lives they seemed to lead! It wasn't that she minded that they only thought of her as Mrs. Curtis Carey, that most of them didn't know she was Christabel Caine,

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 and, if they had known, wouldn't have cared. It was just that it made her sad for them to feel how empty their lives were of beauty, poetry, the things of the spirit. "And they exhaust me," she explained to Curtis when he tried to convince her that they were all "nice girls." "They make me long to be either alone or really with some one—the way I am really with you, darling."

But sometimes she wondered, were she and Curtis really together? He adored her, yes, but did he understand her? Or was she doomed to loneliness forever? "Tragedy, real tragedy, comes to the rare soul capable of it," she wrote in her Journal, thinking of past days when she had been really with Boyd, Gobby—Elliott. And on another day she wrote:

"To suffer! Not to dodge! To go through all pain, all sorrow! The Blessèd Angela of Foligno"

Was it the Blessèd Angela? She couldn't quite remember, but never mind, no one would be apt to know the difference. "The Blessèd

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 Angela of Foligno said that if pain were for sale in the market place she would run to buy it. Saint Catherine of Siena said, 'I have chosen suffering for my consolation.' 'Suffering is the ancient law of love,' said the Eternal Wisdom to Suso. 'There is no quest without pain, there is no lover who is not also a martyr.

With the sense of loneliness came a longing to see Elliott again, and for a time she let her imagination play with the idea. Perhaps at the theater she would glance up from her program and find him in the seat beside her, and they would look at each other with a long tranced look. Or she would step from her motor, almost in his arms. "Christabel!" And he would stand gazing at her, oblivious of passersby, until, in spite of the pain in her heart, she would have to laugh, to put her hand through his arm in the old way. Or, walking in the Park in the first snow—they had loved the first snow; they had always called it theirs—she

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 would meet him, alone with his memories, as she was alone with hers.

But none of these dreams came true, so on a day when she had nothing that she wanted to do, and was so lonely that tears kept stinging into her eyes, she wrote asking him to tea.

As she dressed for him she paused to look deeply into the mirror, to see herself as he would see her. Head up, with gallant courage—a brave little smile. How should she greet him? What should her first words be? Perhaps a wordless welcome would be best. She went toward the mirror, both hands out. Her chiffon sleeves floated back, then fluttered down, folding wings. Gray bird, wounded bird, home in your nest again.

Her hands trembled, touching powder box and lipstick, as she remembered, shaken and glowing, that he had tried to kill himself for her. She drew a deep sobbing breath, a white hand went to her throat. Had she the courage to see him, after all? And, leaving herself out of it, was it going to be too hard for him?

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 But he hadn't any telephone and it was nearly tea time. And, anyway, one must not dodge life.

Oh, my dear, don't look so! Forgive you? Oh, Elliott, what is there to forgive? You have given me the greatest bliss that has entered my life, and the greatest pain, which is the same thing—how could I feel anything but love and gratitude toward you?

She opened the safe set into her blue wall, near the prie-dieu under an ivory Christ on an ebony cross, took out her diamond and sapphire bracelets, tried them on, then put them back again. No jewels this afternoon, except, perhaps, the triple string of pearls. Pearls are for tears.

She can't throw me over and then think all she has to do is to whistle and I'll come running, Elliott told himself, putting Christabel's note into its envelope and going back to his painting. "Oh, shut up, damn you!" he shouted at his model, a sulphur-crested cocka-

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 too he had borrowed from Mrs. O'Reilly on the ground floor, that was screeching hoarsely. I'm not going to be one of her tame young men. He painted fiercely, biting his lower lip to keep it from twitching. But he hardly saw what he was painting, and the cuckatoo, still screeching, had begun to dance from one claw to the other, to lift a yellow crest and spread a yellow-lined wing, the quills separated, to bite with a black beak into yellow down. It made Elliott nervous when it behaved that way, and Christabel's note had upset him, too. The day was ruined as far as painting went.

If he didn't go she'd think he didn't dare, or that she had broken his heart, or something, he told himself, pulling on a pair of thick gloves before he offered the cockatoo a piece of banana. "Here, pretty Cocky! Hey! You will, will you, you devil? Nice birdie, have a banana, and then we'll go down to Mrs. O'Reilly."

Coming back to peace and quiet, he reread her note. "Elliott—please come—" she had

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 written after her signature, and the letters looked not quite steady.

Was he or was he not a man of the world? That was the question, he decided. After all, one evolved a philosophy of life that kept one from taking oneself or anyone else too seriously. He wrote, saying that he would come, and then went out to buy a necktie.

The next afternoon he dressed with fingers that trembled, in spite of the cynical smile reflected in his mirror. Perhaps it was all for the best—one evolves a philosophy of life. He retied his tie—worse than the last time!

Pulling at it, a sudden panic seized him. He would have given anything not to go. He could telephone from the drug store—but what could he say? Suppose he just stayed here, and sent her a note tomorrow saying he had been taken ill or suddenly called out of town?

She was expecting him. He couldn't disappoint her.

Gobby had reported her as bitterly unhappy in Paris. Suppose seeing him was too much

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 for her? Had he any right to expose her to such an emotional strain?

And yet, if he could comfort her

What, crying? Silly little Christabel!

Damn! A hole in his heel. Maybe it wouldn't show over the top of his shoe.

He began to feel forgiving, protective. Christabel, dearest—girl, what is there to forgive?

Some one had told him about a man who had killed himself for Christabel, taking poison on the day of her wedding. There were not many girls for whom men would kill themselves. And this girl, who, in the world's eyes, had everything, needed him—had sent for him.

He wondered who the poor fellow had been.

Her house, washed pink, with twisted columns, and a noseless saint in a niche above the door, was so Venetian that a gondola should have been before it instead of the delivery motor of The Superior Market, Third Avenue. He gave his name scornfully, with drooping mouth and eyelids, throwing away his hat and

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 stick. The butler caught them, and led him through thick fog to the drawing room, leaving him there to wait for Christabel.

He waited.

The fog began to lift. He looked about him. Things, material possessions! Only a bird in a gilded cage, he sang in his mind with bitter mirth, for he and Donatia and Boyd and Gobby were finding old songs rather amusing that autumn. A butler, tapestries, silver and lace on the table before the fire—what an absurd scale of values they implied. And yet there were people who were impressed by such things.

Poor Christabel. So she has come to this, he thought, contrasting the huge sheaves of chrysanthemums like helpings of crab salad, the Madonna drenched in brown gravy, with that other firelit room of hers, exquisite and simple—one perfect rose, his portrait of her alone on the wall.

Was she coming? No, not yet. But his heart began to thud. What should his first

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 words be? He adjusted his tie in the glass over the dark Madonna.

Footsteps outside the door. Heavens! He hoped he wasn't going to be sick!

She came toward him with both hands out. Her chiffon sleeves floated behind her. How lovely she was! They looked at each other deeply, until they were interrupted by the footman bringing in tea.

"So good of you to suggest my coming."

"So good of you to come. Cigarette?" And, as the footman left the room, "Now tell me—everything."

"What is there to tell that you don't already know?"

"Sometimes I feel as if I didn't know anything, Elliott—or at least that I hadn't known anything until it was too late to be of any use. Do you ever feel that way?"

"All I've learned is that nothing's worth being unhappy about," said Elliott, with a laugh so scornful and explosive that it startled himself.

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