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 "Oh, my dear, not that, not that! Don't let it make you bitter!"

The footman brought in crumpets, and Christabel began to pour Elliott's tea. He watched her put in lemon, and said nothing, though he always took cream. Their hands shook so as she gave him the cup that tea splashed out and scalded him. How sad her face was! He asked, for the footman's ears:

"Did you have a wonderful trip?"

"Did I? Why, yes—yes, of course we did."

"Where did you go?"

"Oh, the usual places. London and Paris and motoring through the château country."

The footman went out.

"Christabel, are you happy? Forgive me, I have to know!"

"Is anyone happy, Elliott? Well, I suppose a good many are, really—at least, they aren't sensitive enough for anything but cowlike content—but that isn't what you and I mean by happiness, is it?"

"Oh, Christabel, why?"

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 The footman brought in cakes.

"Are you writing anything now?"

"I'm just getting back to it. There have been so many interruptions. Are you painting?"

The footman put another log on the fire.

"That will do, Alfred, thank you. And I'm not at home to anyone."

Now that the man was gone, Elliott wasn't sure what to say. Everything he could think of seemed too much or too little. They drank their tea in silence, gazing into the fire. And he was horrified to realize that he had absent-mindedly eaten all his crumpet. He hoped Christabel wouldn't notice or would think he hadn't taken one. It looked so unfeeling. And yet, after all, why should he worry about seeming unfeeling to her, who had been so unfeeling herself? He took another crumpet defiantly.

"Elliott—I must say something to you—quickly, now, while I have the courage. I must tell you that I think I must have been mad when I did what I did. I don't understand why I

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 did it—it wasn't love, unless compassion is love, and pity—he seemed to need me so! And you only seemed to need your work No, no, don't speak. Let me finish before my courage fails me! A woman wants so terribly to be needed, Elliott."

Her hand lay white on the dark velvet between them. He lifted it to his lips. How good it smelled!

"You asked me if I were happy, but I don't believe you, being you, need to have me tell you. But what does that matter? One learns how unimportant one's own happiness is."

"Yes, the important thing is accepting life."

"Isn't it? Oh, how true that is! If only we didn't have to suffer so to learn it!"

She pressed a lace-bordered cobweb to her eyes, and then smiled at him.

"More tea? I'm not a very good hostess, am I? A little pink cake, specialty of the house? Oh, Elliott, do you remember going to the pâtisserie to get cakes for tea?"

"Do I! And our discussions in front of the

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 fire? You and I settling life and death, while Gobby finished up the pastry?"

"Oh, Elliott, teach me to be brave like you! Because I do know how brave you are—I don't mean just in being able to laugh, dear, I mean—I—I just want you to know—I know!"

Know what? he wondered, holding her hands in his, while he wondered, too, what time Mr. Carey got home. It would be just as well to be gone by then.

"And I do realize the courage it takes—just to live. I do understand, because on the ship—I wouldn't tell this to anyone else in the world, but I owe it to you—the water seemed to call me. I was so tired, it would have been so easy! But I had to tell you, so that you would know I understand, and know how I thank you and how proud I am of you, and how grateful I am that what happened happened!"

She's overwrought, he thought. Seeing me has been too much for her. "I'd better go," he said, struggling up from the soft low sofa.

"Yes, perhaps it would be better."

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 "Good-by."

"Good-by, my dear."

Her hand fluttered to her throat, her fingers twisted nervously through strands of pearls.

"Elliott—I must say one thing more to you before you go. Never blame yourself for anything that has happened. You have given me the greatest bliss that I have ever known, and the greatest pain, which is the same thing—how can I ever feel anything but love and gratitude toward you?"

"Oh, Christabel

"You must go now, Elliott."

He was thrilled, his whole body tingled as he lifted a floating sleeve to his lips. Courage and love and sorrow. Elliott and Christabel.

"And do one thing for me, my dear. Forget what I have told you, and when you think of me—if you think of me—think that I am happy"

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old room Mrs. Caine was painting tea trays with baskets of flowers for the Hospital Fair. The forget-me-nots were the most fun to do, dot, dot, dot, dot with the pale blue paint, then one dot of yellow in the center. As she painted she wrote a letter in her head. Darling Christabel—Guess what I have been doing all afternoon? Painting! You didn't know I was an artist, did you? I have been painting trays for the Fair, and really if I do say it they are just as pretty as can be. I am doing them with little baskets of flowers

Dot, dot, dot, dot. Thursday. Katie's day out, but it was never any trouble to get supper for Fred. She was just going to have deviled crabs; they were all ready to pop into the oven. There was a Mary Pickford picture to go to later. Life is full of nice things, she thought,

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 glowing. Deviled crabs, movies, Fred, my painting

She finished a tray, and had a good look at it, pleased and surprised that she had done anything so charming. A vague plan of painting all the bedroom furniture with bunches of old-fashioned flowers drifted through her mind. She began another tray, humming a song.

Through the open window came the sound of Jake's lawn-mower, the scent of freshly cut grass. Another scent, that always brought memories of a child's summer by the sea, the scent of privet flowers hot in the sun. She entered the tiny shop—boxes of glass beads, blue, green, gold, and coral-color—peppermint hearts with "Ever Thine" and "Kiss And Make Up" on them in bright pink—dolls with shiny black china hair and tiny feet in high black china boots. She was on the beach where shells holding a little sand and water lay half buried

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 in wet sand. She popped blisters in brown seaweed between thumb and finger; she felt sand between her toes again.

Was that an automobile stopping? The maple tree had grown against the window, so she could no longer see the gate. Yes, the door bell—bother! I'll just let it ring, she said, but she knew she would answer it.

"Mother!"

"Christabel! Darling! Where on earth did you come from? Jake! Oh, Jake! Carry Miss Christabel's bag upstairs, please. Darling, why didn't you let us know you were coming? Katie's out, and everything. Never mind, it's lovely to see you. Everything's all right, isn't it?"

"Everything's all wrong; that's why I came."

"But?"

"No, I don't mean that. Of course everything's all right."

"But what?"

"Please, mother darling! I don't want to

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 talk about it, if you don't mind. How are you?"

"I'm fine."

"Are you?"

"Don't I look it?"

"You look sweet. But I'm very much afraid you're naughty, now that I'm not here to look after you. Haven't you been overdoing? You look tired to me, dear. You must remember that you can't do all the things you used to do."

"Oh, I'm all right." But for the first time she noticed that her back was aching—well, not exactly aching, but she could feel it. That was because she had been transplanting seedlings all morning. She wouldn't mention that, for Christabel had never understood how anyone could really enjoy working in a garden.

She did feel tired, now that she stopped to think about it. But, thank goodness, the guest room was ready. All she had to do was get out the sandal-wood soap, from Christmas, the best bureau cover, and embroidered towels.

"Oh, mother! You're not going to make

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 company of me and put me in the guest room? Oh no! Just put me in my own old room. I've come home to be your little girl again, and try to forget things."

"Well, but it's in an awful mess. I've been painting tea trays. See!" She held up the best one proudly.

"Mother! Aren't you cunning? They're lovely tea trays, simply lovely!"

Feeling like a foolish child, Mrs. Caine carried out the trays, while Christabel shed her clothes.

"Mercy, it's hot! Don't bother about fixing things up, mother dear. Oh, mother, I want to pretend I'm just the way I used to be, that I've never been away—I want to forget everything"

"Christabel dearest, I'm so worried about you. Couldn't you tell me what's the matter? Perhaps I could help."

"No, darling, I'm not going to have you bothered, too."

"It isn't—you haven't—Curtis?"

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 "Curtis is happy and well, and it isn't, and I haven't. Now we'll just forget about it."

"But"

"Now sit right down here. Mother, how long since you've seen a doctor?"

"Goodness! I can't remember! Ages."

"I want you to promise me to go and see Dr. Henderson. No, I know, there isn't anything the matter with you, and you're strong as a prize-fighter, but, all the same, I want you to promise to see Dr. Henderson. It's just common sense to have a good overhauling now and then, as one gets older. I can't have anything happening to my little mother!"

She kissed her tenderly.

"I have a little present for you."

Mrs. Caine, who had begun to droop, revived, and thought hopefully of chocolates. Christabel shook out an orchid-satin bed-jacket edged with uncurled ostrich in long waving fronds.

"There! It's to tempt you to have your breakfasts in bed and save yourself a little."

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 "It's lovely! And, oh, dear, I'm afraid it must have been terribly expensive!"

"It wasn't cheap," Christabel admitted, smiling, and then suddenly cried:

"Oh, mother, if I only had a child! You don't know, you'can't even imagine, the sorrow of childlessness! Oh, if I only had a little daughter to comfort me!"

But she got hold of herself again in a minute, after she had clung half weeping to her mother, and went to take a bath.

Oh, dear! What is the matter? thought Mrs. Caine, squatting slowly to pick up lace and ribbons, putting her hand to her back as she rose. Just like old times to be picking up after Christabel. It's a lucky thing for her she has a maid.

How hot it was getting! Breathless! And it had been so lovely.

That bed-jacket was beautiful, and it was darling of Christabel to have brought it to her, but she never had her breakfasts in bed; she couldn't, with one girl, and Fred would think

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 she was ill. Perhaps she could wear it downstairs to breakfast sometimes—but it would make her feel shy and silly, and she could see the ostrich fronds getting into coffee and butter.

If only Christabel had telegraphed ahead! Then her room would have been all ready, and Katie could have gone out on Wednesday

Goodness! Not a thing in the house for dessert! She went to the telephone and called her husband.

"Fred! Christabel's here. . . . No, I didn't know. . . No—no, I don't know for how long. I'm very much worried. . . . I said I was worried. . . . I can't tell you now. . . . I said never mind now—but, Fred, listen, I haven't anything for dessert. Would you just stop at Bent's and bring home a quart and a pint of strawberry ice-cream? . . . No, they won't deliver this late—they'll put it in a nice container—a quart and a pint of strawberry. . . . I don't think so at all. Why on earth

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 should she let us know? If our own child can't come home any time she wants to!"

Relieved by Fred's saying he thought Christabel might have telegraphed ahead, she left the telephone to answer Christabel, calling from upstairs.

"Mother! If you are coming upstairs any time—don't make a special trip, but just when you do—would you bring me a bowl of ice?"

It really is getting hotter and hotter, Mrs. Caine thought, running out to the garden to cut roses for the table, pausing to wipe her forehead with the back of her wrist, opening the emergency bottle of olives because Christabel was used to grandeur now, shutting the refrigerator lid on her finger. Only the thought of the ice-cream Fred had brought sustained her. But when it appeared, Christabel said she was dieting, and might she have just a little fruit?

Mrs. Caine agitatedly poked into the refrigerator. One banana, but Christabel didn't like bananas much, and, besides, this really was too black for anything. A cantaloupe. She

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 could have half of that for tonight, and half for breakfast. Mrs. Caine would make her stay in bed, so she shouldn't see that they weren't having cantaloupe, too. Fred didn't like bananas, either. Well, she would eat that, and he would just have to do with the saucer of stewed rhubarb she saw lurking behind the box of eggs and the left-over custard. And all the time, as she hurried to get the cantaloupe ready, she got hotter and hotter, and she could feel the ice-cream melting away, exactly as if she were it, going all shapeless and soft.

After supper she rather timidly suggested the movies.

"Of course, dear, if you want to."

"But would you like to? It's Mary Pickford!"

"Is it? Mother, you are too darling!"

"I just thought you might enjoy it"

But, although Christabel was sweet about it, they didn't go. They sat on the porch, looking at fireflies, and asking Christabel respectful questions about the book she was at work on.

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 It was the story of an exquisite girl, married to one man, loved by another. Her husband didn't even try to understand her, and she loved the other man, but he was the one she was going to send away. Mrs. Caine approved of that, though she was disappointed to hear that the book was to end unhappily. She thought Christabel might have let the husband die. How interesting to hear about her books even before they're written, Mrs. Caine thought, giving way to a wide yawn in the dark, and then suddenly cried:

"Christabel! Coffee! I forgot! We've sort of gotten out of the way of having it, since you left. Father thought it kept him awake, and it seemed silly to have it just for me. But I'll make some right away."

"Don't bother about coffee, mother."

"But you always have it at your house."

"That doesn't mean I have to have it here."

But she went in and made it.

After she had taken the cups back to the kitchen, and had a secret, guilty peep at the

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 evening paper there, she slipped up to turn down Christabel's bed and put out her fragrant cobweb nightgown. What beautiful things her child owned! Tortoise shell, crystal stoppered with gold, the little heaps of flexible diamond and sapphire bracelets she had pulled off because they made her wrist hot, and that made Mrs. Caine feel watching eyes in every shadow in the room.

From the porch she could hear Fred. "What does Curtis think?" And Christabel's answering murmur. Her dear little girl. It was lovely to have her home. But what was troubling her? Every time the telephone rang—and it had rung several times this evening—she had jumped, her hand had flown to her heart. I wish she'd tell me. But she doesn't want to worry me—she's very thoughtful.

She could smell honeysuckle. It made her feel sad. Long, long ago; long, long ago. You smell honeysuckle by night, and privet by day when the sun is on it.

What had she been thinking of just as

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 Christabel came? Something that had made her feel so happy—it was just on the tip of her mind

No, she couldn't remember.

Pausing by the bureau to turn out the light, she looked into the mirror. She did look tired. Tired and old.

Christabel went to bed early. It was relaxing to put on her old wrapper, still in the closet, plaster on cold cream, and read The Ladies' Home Journal. "Wow wonderfully she comes home!" she could hear people saying. "Just like a little girl again—completely unspoiled." I'm glad I've kept my love for simple things, she thought, lighting another cigarette.

Home was rather pleasant, after all, with its shabby chintz and shabby old books, and garden roses whose edges had been nibbled by insects. Dinner starting right in without any soup, and the tablecloth just a tablecloth, not a bishop's brocaded robe or a lace altar cloth. She was glad she had been thoughtful enough

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 to come without letting them know ahead—it had saved them all bother of preparation. She knew her mother! She would have hurried around getting flowers and making chocolate cake, and there would have been chicken for dinner because of company. For that matter, she would be surprised if there weren't chicken and chocolate cake tomorrow. She would remember never to let them know. Happy surprises were so good for people.

Poor darling little mother! If only she didn't need me so!

Life was a heavy load. She had tried to run away from her own trouble, but here it was, sighing in the leaves outside her window, filling the familiar room, rolling her from side to side in her bed, as waves roll a pebble.

She tried to remember her letter. Elliott dear, my heart is breaking with what I have to write to you. Why must we always give each other the terrible gift of pain? How can I say what I must say to you? Then what? She

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 couldn't remember exactly, but she had written that they had better stop seeing each other.

Dear Elliott, she would always love him, of course. Shutting her eyes, she could make herself see, with almost no effort at all, small bright pictures of herself and him—at least, she usually could, but tonight the porter on the train from New York melted into Curtis practicing an approach shot on her hearth-rug while he told her to have a good time; Curtis melted into the sweet peas on her dressing-table. She must be more exhausted than she had realized. She yawned until there was a roaring in her ears.

But the situation had become strained. Elliott was demanding too much, expecting to come to tea all the time, and turning sulky if anyone else was there. All winter, all spring, their tragedy had flooded her life with melancholy interest; she had thrilled to his adoration. Somehow all her circle had gotten to know about it, except, of course, Curtis, if he counted as one of her circle. They had made her feel

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 glamorous with love and sorrow. It has been a beautiful winter, for all its pain, she thought. But now she felt that he and she must part, for his own sake, and she had written him so. She had told him not to come again. What if it does bring me loneliness, utter loneliness? she thought, crushing out her cigarette and turning off the light. No one shall know. I have no right to make others unhappy just because my own heart is aching. She saw herself a gallant lady, smiling, smiling She really did see herself, in a green velvet riding-habit, the skirt lifted by a delicate gauntleted hand, a plumed hat shading the lovely tragic eyes, the smiling mouth, like a lady in an old painting. The Gallant Lady.

Three days ago she had written him, telling him there was no possible answer. And then she had waited for his answer until today, when, in a panic of nervousness, she had run away home. With his tendency to suicide, suppose it had been too much for him. Every time the telephone rang she had nearly died. Oh,

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 I'm so tired, so tired, she thought. I don't want to see him, or hear from him—I don't want to think about him

With a sudden feeling of suction in her chest, she thought, suppose he does kill himself this time, and suppose my letters are found. Suppose they get into the papers, for Curtis to read. What had she written? What had she written? Dozens of notes

Oh, Curtis, she thought, it's you I love, my dear. So strong, so safe. It's to you I give all my loyalty.

If I'm ever such a fool as to get into a mess like this again!

Try to relax. Think of something pleasant. Gerald Smith. She had seen him in the train coming out to Germantown, and had promised to lunch with him in Philadelphia tomorrow. She tingled, remembering the way he had looked at her.

Darling mother and father! She must come home oftener. And yet that meant loneliness for her own dear Curtis.

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 Those touching little trays—her breakfast on a tray—she supposed she would have to have it, it would make mother so happy. My dear, I only want you to be happy, truly, truly, it doesn't matter about me. No, she mustn't let herself think about Elliott.

A sighing in the leaves deepened to a delicate patter, the sleepy sound of rain flowed through the darkness. What is he thinking now, lying awake? The grass and wildflowers will root in this aching heart, this tired brain—remember that, use it sometime. The grass will break my heart and pierce my side—Jake cutting grass—father and mother must have the privet hedge cut; it looks awful, all overgrown, nobody lets privet bloom—Gerald—tomorrow—mother's chocolate cake—Gerald, dear, please, you mustn't say things like that—Gerald

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was discontented and restless in the months that followed her dismissal of Elliott. Not because she missed him. It was a relief to have him out of her life, for he had begun to be unmanageable. She wanted to be adored. She wanted to prove almost too much for men, to make them love her passionately and almost uncontrollably, in spite of all her efforts to save them. To feel that they were always just about to burst, but never quite bursting, that she was to them not only a woman, but a high star. She basked in an atmosphere of reverent passion as sweet and warm as the atmosphere of her firelit flower-filled rooms, and the fires of love were as well controlled as the fires in her fireplaces, that Alfred kept supplied with logs, and screened when sparks began to fly.

Most of her adorers were willing coöperators. They were dramatic young men, who could

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 throw themselves into their parts so fully that they themselves believed in their firmly closed lips, their dilated nostrils. She and the young man of the moment spoke to each other fragmentarily, their words, she thought, like sunbright leaves floating lightly on deep waters. The Tuesday young man who had done his drawing room in solferino velvet, with beadwork bell-pulls, and wreaths under glass of straw-colored ferns and dark blackberries made from hair; the Friday young man who had designed the curious costumes for the Monday young man's play in which a murderer fell in love with a wax saint. There were mild thrills sometimes as hand touched hand when cups were refilled. But when the soft collars and pastel-tinted neckties were gone, they left no troubled wake, nothing more upset than the crushed silk cushions, the two half-empty teacups, the pile of cigarette stubs, that showed some one else had been understanding Christabel.

But Elliott had shown signs of forgetting to

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 be reverent to an exhausting degree, and was only kept in order by the more exhausting means of being led to talk exclusively about himself and his painting. When she said those things that demanded wordless answers, restraint shown by clenched hand or bitten lip, he was increasingly apt to answer literally. She was glad, for both their sakes, that she had been strong enough to decide they should not see each other again. That was not why she was so depressed. She did not know the cause, she could not find a cure.

She was bored with theaters, bored with dinners; she wept when Curtis suggested Florida. In her mother-in-law's box at the opera, lent them week after week, drifting her feather fan through air vibrating with plump Mimi's last farewells, kilted Edgardo's laments, or the love-making of Pinkerton and Cho-Cho-San, she was so bored she could have screamed. Amusements can't help me, she thought. People can't help me. Yet somewhere there must be

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 a still peace where I can be lost, and find myself again.

She thought of God. She would become one with God.

She had always suspected herself of the mystical temperament. Now she took up contemplation, gazing at an apple until she became one with it, the apple blossom within it that had changed to a star, the seeds, little brown monks in their cells, the dark roots, the branches melting into light, the cycle of the seasons. If I can see this clearly, I can see God, she told herself. One of her best-known poems sprang from that apple she took from the silver fruit dish, wedding gift of Mr. and Mrs. Talbot Emery Towne.

She found she could practice contemplation on anything, a walnut that became a fairy shallop with a wrinkled passenger, a sweet pea, mauve wings netted in green tendrils, rimmed with celestial glory. Even hard things—alley cats, telegraph poles. She was de-

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 lighted to find that she could see the light of heaven pulsing through them all.

Meditation, too. That was harder, because her thoughts became a swarm of bees when she tried to empty her mind, to hold to the central silence. "Take your seat within the heart of the thousand-petaled lotus," she read in an Eastern book brought her by Gobby, who was charmed by her new ideas, and all for companionably contemplating and meditating with her. And though she wished the words hadn't reminded her of an invitation to mount a sightseeing bus, she found them helpful. She could see the thousand up-curling petals; from the tip of each she could see pure light pouring toward the core of incredible brightness that was herself, sitting cross-legged in the golden heart. Being still, listening for the inner voice, she would think, who of the rest of the people I know is doing anything like this?

God helped her to write Fly in Amber that winter. Each night she placed the next few

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 pages of her novel in His hands. She had never written so easily.

The nights were best of all. Lying in her soft bed under linen and lace and silk, she gave herself up to the life of the spirit. Only to lose myself utterly, utterly, she thought, floating light and warm in the darkness. Only to rid myself of self, to be utterly Thine. Oh, Perfect Love, fill me and flood me! I am a shell that holds the sound of the sea, I am a raindrop that holds the sky and the stars. Come to me, Lover and Beloved. She would lie still, trembling, half-fainting. Sometimes, if she could keep still long enough, light spattered, scarlet or white, on the blackness of closed lids, and in a panic she would jerk herself back to consciousness, her heart pounding. Gobby agreed with her that she had been in great and glorious danger. He had not progressed beyond swimming yellow polka dots, and then he was always distracted by something—a taxi, a blanket tickling him.

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 In her Secret Journal she described her new absorption.

"To be rid of Self—to cast my Self into the white-hot flame of Thy Love, and be consumed."

And again:

"Oh, happy-torment that Thou givest me! Oh, tide of Love and Blessing and Brightness that Thou pourest into me, and through poor little me into the World! And yet I won't say, poor little me, but Blessed Me, because Thou hast deigned to make me part of Thee, to choose me for Thy Beloved"

These entries seemed rather daring when she read them over, remembering the religion of Dr. Marsh and the congregation in Germantown. Kid gloves, oak pews, green and purple shepherds in memorial windows, hymn 505, the Glory of God bounded by late breakfast with pancakes, by mid-day dinner with roast beef. She could not imagine Dr. Marsh with his glittering cuffs and broad As, or Mrs. Marsh with her feather boa and her pince-nez, shud-

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 dering with ecstasy beneath the Divine caresses, or approving of the shudders of any of their flock. But beside the books on mysticism her words were mild. Other people, if they were writing the truth, had been through even more intense experiences than she, and were outspoken in their descriptions. Determinedly she resumed her seat in the heart of the thousand-petaled lotus.

Sometimes her nights of ecstasy left her half-sick and dizzy in the morning. Even when she found it more and more necessary to pump up her interest in the life of the spirit, the sickness and dizziness remained. Her restlessness returned, she repeated to herself again and again what she had said to her mother—if I only had a child!

On her bedside table, with The Imitation of Christ and The Little Flowers of Saint Francis (she must remember to cut the pages! Often after she had gone to bed she would have picked it up, except for that) she placed a baby's dimpled hand in alabaster, and some-

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 times when she looked at it tears rose to her eyes, surprising her a little, touching her deeply. Children playing in the Park caused her to weep, and she wrote in her Journal:

"When I walk, my Little Dream Boy Tuns by my side"

Some of her most poignant poems were written that winter, on the sorrow of childlessness.

She got into such a low state of mind that Curtis finally persuaded her to see Dr. Deacon.

After the doctor left she lay thinking of what he had told her. In her windows pots of hyacinths with close-packed buds split the pale spring sunshine. It was the first day of April.

April Fool's Day. Her eyes fell on the baby's alabaster hand by her bed, and she gave it a slight push and turned her head away.

Lying there in her white-lace nightgown, under blue coverlet with silver stars, she felt herself floating, a cloud in the sky, a disembodied spirit. She crossed her hands, arching the delicate wrists, and closed her eyes, and she could see herself lying there as if she stood

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 by her own bed. She could see tall white candles with golden flames, a pall of white narcissus, golden-hearted. A voice said, "So young, in all the promise of her genius!" Another voice answered, "Her poor little motherless baby" A tear oozed from her closed lids—another

But Curtis, on his knees by her bed, was adoring and delighted. His family and her family petted and praised her. She had never been given so many presents. A new car, strands of pearls for her wrists, the enormous emerald held in a circle of frost that she had fallen in love with at Cartier's and that Curtis had said he couldn't afford.

Her mother wrote:

"Uncle Johnnie complains that he can't take a step in any of the aunts' houses without getting a loop of pink wool around his ankle, they are all so busy knitting socks and sacques for the darling baby."

The two families worshiped her, solicitous, until they made her feel like a young Madonna

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 rising starry with hope and fear from the dark kneeling circle.

"After all, what career is as great as motherhood?" she asked Boyd Benjamin, who had dropped in for a whisky and soda and to deplore this handicap to Christabel's career.

"I knew it! I knew when you married uptown and got prosperous that you'd go Victorian, too."

"Victoria didn't invent having babies."

"Specious," said Boyd, screwing a cigarette into a foot-long holder.

"To give life isn't a little thing, Boyd; it's a very beautiful and wonderful privilege," Christabel said, gently, and she thought, Frustration! That's what it is. Frustration and subconscious jealousy. Poor old Boyd! Then, as Boyd continued to scowl and puff, regardless of Christabel's hand waving away the smoke or pressing a handkerchief to her nose, she added:

"Boyd darling, would you mind not smoking? I hate to stop you, but one gets silly when one's not very strong"

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 Poor Boyd! she's getting—well, the only word is coarse—she thought, letting the smoke curl lazily from her nostrils, resting after Boyd had gone. But it's hard on people whose lack of appeal keeps them outside the stream of life. Poor old Boyd, worrying about careers, as if painting eggplants, or even writing poems, mattered at all compared with being what was really the heart of the world, a mother.

She could not help realizing that the Secret Journal touched heights during those months that it had never touched before, could not help believing that when it was published—if it was published—years and years away—those letters in it to her unborn child would comfort and inspire other women, would speak softly as opening petals and clearly as trumpets. Not to mention the poems that made up "First Born""Out of the whirlwind I gathered the small white Flower," "Mystery, small as a seed and more great than the Sun," and the rest.

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 In November her twins were born, strong and beautiful.

She named them Michael and Marigold, expecting opposition, but the names charmed everyone. Uncle Johnnie was reported as pretending to think they were called Patrick and Petunia, but nothing was sacred to Uncle Johnnie.

Toward the end of her convalescence she granted an audience to Gobby. Coming noiselessly to the door of her sitting room, she found him with his back to her, bending, scooping up something—what on earth was he doing? Then she realized he was practicing kissing a hand of air, and, tactfully withdrawing, made a more audible entrance, and received on her own hand the result of his practice.

"Christabel, I didn't think you could be more beautiful, but you are. I'm not being personal!"

"Dear Gobby! It's wonderful to see you again."

"That Madonna-blue chiffon! And the way

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 the light falls behind your head actually makes a sort of halo."

She smiled on her worshiper, letting her hand rest lightly on his arm.

"You mustn't spoil me!"

"No one could do that!"

"What is this intriguing parcel?"

"Some Balkan toys for the babies."

"Gobby, how divine! Oh! This shell-pink pig is my favorite, so corpulent! So exactly like you! To find such entrancing things, I mean. And oh, this gnome in the pine-cone hat! How the Wunderkinder will adore them, after a while! Oh, Gobby, how I do long to have you see my two absurd kitten-eyed angels! But Miss Hess hardly lets me look at them. A strawberry tart? I had Mrs. Britton make them especially for you."

"Christabel, I do think having a cook you call Mrs. is just the height of style! I really am touched. I believe you remember my weakness for strawberry tarts from the Gay Street

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 days! That reminds me, I didn't tell you about Elliott and Donatia, did I?"

"What about Elliott and Donatia?"

"Well, I think it really is going to happen this time—I think they really are going to get married. They're together the whole time. Of course it's almost happened so many times, but this time does seem different."

"Does he seem happy?"

"He certainly does! I think it would be fine, don't you?"

"I want Elliott to be happy almost more than I want anything in the world, Gobby. I can't see happiness for him with Donatia, but perhaps you're right. I hope so, with all my heart."

After he went she lay thinking of what he had told her. Elliott and Donatia. Elliott and Donatia! Really!

I didn't think you could be more beautiful, but you are. Gobby's voice sounded through her thoughts. She did feel slender and beautiful again. Getting up, she clasped her hands

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 behind her head, then ran them down her sides. Beautiful, a mirror repeated.

Deceived by her courage, the specialists, Dr. Train and Dr. Von Boden, with Dr. Deacon a weak echo, had told Curtis she had had an unusually easy time. She would never trust any of them again. She had come through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. She ought to know. It was she who had had the twins. But now her body was humming with life, she wanted to live again with all her being.

She gazed at her reflection. I didn't think you could be more beautiful, but you are. I've been to a dark place and a far place—unimaginable awfulness—Elliott and Donatia—shadows in blue chiffon—I've come back wiser. I didn't think you could be more beautiful

Going to her desk, she took a sheet of her special paper, with Christabel in her handwriting flung in a silver spray across a corner, and wrote:

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I've been to a dark place and a far place since we last saw each other. And now that it's over—the unimaginable awfulness—I would not for anything give it up, for I've come back stronger and wiser. I've come back knowing that loving-kindness from friend to friend is the only thing that really matters, I've come back longing—longing—to see the few I really care for.

Will you come and see me?

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United States entered the World War with Christabel's complete approval. Yet her patriotism did not make her narrow-minded. She was able to assure Elliott, a pacifist, that she understood why he refused to stand up in theaters when the "Star-spangled Banner" was played. "I do, I do understand so completely how much more courage it takes than it would to fight, how much easier it would be to join in the war hysteria, and I honor you for it," she told him, at the same time that she told him she couldn't go to the theater with him that evening.

Friends who were in New York were being kind to her in the evenings, trying to keep her from being lonely, for Curtis, beautiful in uniform, had left for a South Carolina camp.

"The poetry was lovely," he wrote Christabel. "And I am certainly looking forward to reading the book on Spiritual Values just

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 as soon as I get time." And a page later, "Could you send me some detective books, as I have quite a lot of time on my hands?"

Gobby was a sergeant, somewhere in France. "The poetry was wonderful," he wrote Christabel. "I feel from it that you must be suffering exquisitely, and my only consolation is that it is marvelous for your art. I will write you my reactions to the essays on Spiritual Values just as soon as I get time to read them—they keep us pretty busy here, as you can imagine! Since you are so sweet as to ask if there is anything else I would like to have you send me, I would certainly love some chocolate. You have to be a millionaire when it comes to buying it here"

Boyd Benjamin was in France, driving an ambulance. Christabel could see her, in the unbecoming mud and mustard of her khaki uniform, striding along with steps twice as long as any man's, and following that vision she could see herself, in white that turned from silver to gold as she went down a long corridor,

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 and others of Promies, Pity and Kindnes. I anwered in a few words, but in the mot ubmiive manner, lifting up my left Hand and both mine Eyes to the Sun, as calling him for a Witnes; and being almot famihed with Hunger, having not eaten a Morel for ome hours before I left the Ship, I found the demands of Nature o trong upon me, that I could not forbear hewing my Impatience (perhaps againt the trict rules of Decency) by putting my finger frequently on my Mouth, to ignify that I wanted Food. The Hurgo (for o they call a great Lord, as I afterwards learnt) underlood me very well. He decended from the Stage, and commanded that everal Ladders hould be applied to my Sides, on which above an hundred of the Inhabitants mounted, and walked towards my Mouth, laden with baskets full of Meat, which had been provided and ent thither by the King's Orders, upon the firt intelligence he received of me. I oberv'd there was the Fleh of everal Animals,


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 in and out of sunlight falling from high windows. She saw the faces on the pillows brighten. "Sister" "Sister" Even the most terribly wounded managed to whisper it as she passed, managed a twisted answering smile to her smile that was so near tears.

But she did not go to France. "I long to go—oh, how I long to go!" she told Austin Weeks, who in happier days had done the portrait of her in a gray velvet robe de style, with a greyhound curled about her, that hung over Curtis's desk and who now was camouflaging battle-ships in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. "But I know the biggest sacrifice I can make for our boys is to stay here and use my own special gift, just as you are doing. Anyone can drive an ambulance, or nurse, but we who have been given gifts—oh, Austin, are we blessed or cursed?we have no choice."

So, although she did a little work in a white uniform and veil—the costume she wore in the beautiful photographs used to advertise her book of war poems—and gave a great deal of,

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 Curtis's money, she felt that her important work was in connection with her writing. She autographed hundreds of copies of books for bazaars; Fly in Amber, selling well, supported several war orphans; and she never said no to a request for a benefit reading. Two or three times a week she could be seen coming out of her Venetian house, a Venetian lady in a black tricorne, with a small black lace mask of veil shading her mysterious eyes, going to read her poems somewhere. "Perhaps they will comfort some one just a little," she said, wistfully.

"It seems to me so wrong not to try to bring as much beauty into this poor ugly world as you can, especially now," she said to Austin Weeks. "I feel as if, just because my own heart is so heavy—oh, Austin, so heavy, so heavy!—I must make an effort, now of all times, to try to look as nice as I can." And to his answer she had to reply: "Oh, Austin, you mustn't talk like that! You mustn't spoil me!"

So when she read before clubs and circles,

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 or sat at speakers' tables, she wore soft fur and velvet and pearls, and sometimes overheard, among the people crowding around to meet her, a whispered:

"She's like a little queen!"

And she tried to be queenly, in the highest sense—Noblesse oblige—to her adorers as they were introduced.

"Oh, Miss Caine! This is a real privilege! I don't know whether you caught my name. I'm Mrs. Merkle, Grace Gladwin Merkle, you might possibly have heard it in connection with my talks on 'The Psychology of Success.' I wanted to tell you how interested I was in Fly in Amber, it had a theme so like a novel I wrote several years ago—well, no, it wasn't published, but several publishers considered it"

"Oh, Mrs. Caine, your reading was simply marvelous!"

"This isn't Christabel Caine? But, my dear, you're only a child!"

"This is a great pleasure, Miss Caine! I'm

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 sure you must be tired of hearing how much we all enjoyed your poems! I wonder if you ever happened to meet my nephew—he's a poet, too—Edgar Temple Anderson—well, it's a little volume called Heart's Home, and then he won the Southwestern Poetry Society's second prize with a poem called 'Mary Magdalene, on Broadway'"

"I just can't tell you

"Your poems were delightful, Miss Caine."

"I enjoyed your reading particularly, Miss Caine, being a writer myself"

Poor dears, thought Christabel, hearing her voice answer their adulation graciously, gently. After all, how human to try to shine, even if it's only by reflected light. Amusing, and pitiful, and yet rather beautiful. It was like something Austin Weeks had said, that had struck her as so true, "Life is the laughter of a broken-hearted clown."

She wrote in her Secret Journal:

"No one will ever know how hard these readings are. They leave me utterly spent, and

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 and articles for the 'Moniteur,' revising the details of the budgets, giving instructions to architects as to alterations to be made at the Tuileries and the Church of the Madeleine, throwing an occasional sarcasm at Madame de Staël and the Parisian journals, interfering to put down a squabble at the Grand Opéra, carrying on a correspondence with the Sultan of Turkey and the Shah of Persia, so that, while his body was at Finkenstein, his mind seemed to be working at a hundred different places in Paris, in Europe, and throughout the world.

We find him in one letter asking Ney if he has duly received the muskets which have been sent him; in another he gives directions to Prince Jerome as to the shirts, great-coats, clothes, shoes, shakos, and arms to be served out to the Wurtemburg regiments; again he presses Cambacérès to forward to the army a double stock of corn—"The ifs and the buts," said he, "are at present out of season, and above all it must be done with speed." Then he informs Daru that the army want shirts, and that they don't come to hand. To Massena he writes, "Let me know if your biscuit and bread arrangements are yet completed." To the Grand Duc de Berg he gives directions as to the accoutrements of the cuirassiers—" They complain that the men want sabres; send an officer to obtain them at Posen. It is also said they want helmets; order that they be made at Ebling It is not by sleeping that one can accomplish anything." Thus no point of detail was neglected, and the energies of all were stimulated into action with extraordinary power. Though many of the Emperor's days were occupied by inspection of


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 yet after the emotional exhaustion comes an indescribable peace and happiness, deep, oh, deep, to feel that I can feed these hungry, souls. When I just let myself rest in that thought, I know that in spite of the sorrow and darkness of these heart-breaking days, in spite of all my pain, I am a happy and a blesséd Child. And I pray that in spite of all their kindness and the wonderful things they say to me, I may keep unspoiled, I may just be happily, humbly grateful because I have been given this gift to share."

Aunt Deborah died in her sleep that winter. "Something in me has died with you, Aunt Deborah darling," Christabel wrote in her Journal. "My childhood, I think. Those days I spent at Shady Lawn, out in the garden where the spilled petals of the thousand-leafed roses covered the ground with pink silk from a very rapture of blooming, or in high-shuttered rooms, always dim and cool, though heat beat outside like the waves of brassy sea. And you were

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 always there with me, dear, loving the lonely child, who does not forget."

She could not go to the funeral, for she was in bed with threatened influenza, but she sent a blanket of violets—"For darling Aunt Deborah, from her Christabel"; she went into deepest mourning, and she wrote the poem, "An Old Woman Dies in Time of War," beginning, "Sorrow on sorrow, a shadow that falls in the night"

Uncle Johnnie, in New York on business connected with Deborah's estate, and lunching at the Century Club, saw Talbot Emery Towne, but did not see him first. Mr. Towne, eating rice pudding at another table, pushed his saucer aside, pulled down his face, and came to Uncle Johnnie.

"Mr. Caine," he said, in a voice several notes lower than usual.

"Oh! Howdo."

"I want to assure you that Mrs. Towne and

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 I are feeling the deepest sympathy for you in your loss."

"Thank you."

"We have thought of you constantly"

Liar, thought Uncle Johnnie. If you get your voice down any lower, my lad, you'll never get it up again, which would be a blessing to the world, God knows!

"A rarely beautiful spirit"

But presently, with a brave uplift of head, mouth corners, voice, Mr. Towne changed the subject to Christabel—also a rarely beautiful spirit, he told Uncle Johnnie. "Courageously keeping up her work, in spite of her loss. She feels, as this fine younger generation of ours does feel, and some of us oldsters, too, perhaps, that in a time of universal sorrow one has no right to dwell in one's personal griefs." And finding, to his surprise, that Mr. Caine was Not visiting his niece, he told him that Christabel was giving a reading that afternoon for the benefit of the French Wounded, in Mrs. Towne's drawing room.

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 "Under the patronage of our very good friend, Countess de la Tour du Sanglier. I myself, most unfortunately for me, will be unable to be present—we poor publishers can't call our lives our own—but Mrs. Towne will be overjoyed to see you and to have you join her afterward in a cup of tea."

In Mrs. Towne's long drawing room the front row of little gilt chairs was empty, and emptiness scalloped into the second and third rows, but the rest of the room was full of ladies, edging in sideways, flapping gloved hands, loosening furs; and here and there a gentleman. Uncle Johnnie sat down, as near the door as possible, the fragile chair swaying and squeaking, though he had grown quite thin since Deborah died.

A Neo-Greek young lady plucked an accompaniment to conversation from her harp, an owl in a cutaway recited in French, followed by great applause, and then came Christabel.

She stood silent for a moment, unsmiling, but starry-eyed. In her long crêpe veil, with a

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 wimple of white crêpe framing the lovely oval of her face, she looked like a young Mother Superior. "Precious person!" the lady next Uncle Johnnie groaned, and her companion whispered reverently, "War widow?" while other ladies whispered, "Shsh!" for Christabel had begun to read.

You win, Christabel, Uncle Johnnie thought. No matter what the circumstances, I back you to win!

Christabel was reading, and much more to the same effect—a thorough inventory, ending:

Quite right, too, thought Uncle Johnnie. Don't you do it. What aren't you going to speak about next?

She swayed slightly, a flower in the wind, and clung to the back of a chair, as if she were

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 spent, before she raised her head and gave the title.

An Old Woman Dies in Time of War.

Uncle Johnnie got up and went out, walking on several outraged ladies. Fumbling for his hat, he could hear Christabel's voice,

The butler, who had retired for a few words with the waiters in the dining room, got to the front door just too late. It closed with a bang loud enough to make all the adoring ladies jump.

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the war was over, Christabel went back to her writing. While she was at work on her whimsical romance, O Fair Dove, Uncle Johnnie had heard her say—not to himself, "It will be ignored and hated."

"Oh no! Why, I'm sure it will be a great success!" a voice had answered, whose voice he didn't remember, for Eliza's drawing room had been full that afternoon, and Mrs. Russell had distracted his attention by talking to him.

"I've tried bone-meal around the roots, and I've tried soot" Mrs. Russell said, and through her voice Christabel's voice had replied:

"I write for the few—I can say this to you, because I do feel that you are an understanding person—and if there is even one who hears what I'm saying, that will be all I ask."

I hear what you're saying, thought Uncle Johnnie. "—whale-oil soap," said Mrs. Rus-

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 sell. "But of course, if they've already begun to curl up"

"I do indeed understand," the understanding person answered, earnestly. "One feels that in all your work there is that quality of truth too deeply and sensitively felt to be easily understood"

"Every one of them with the yellows!" Mrs. Russell said, triumphantly, in a duet with Christabel's:

"If it is a success—what the world calls a success—that will mean to me that it is an utter failure."

So when O Fair Dove turned out to be a best seller, he wondered what Christabel would say. He never doubted her ability, but he was curious.

Calling on Susannah one afternoon, he voiced his curiosity.

"If thee really wants to know, I have a letter from the dear child that came this morning." She left the room to get it, and Uncle Johnnie sat looking at a small table on which bronze

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 elephants held between them Stars and Wild Strawberries, by Christabel Caine, Carnation Flower, by Christabel Caine, Rocket Fire: Poems of War, by Christabel Caine, Fly in Amber, by Christabel Caine, O Fair Dove, by Christabel Caine. A bowl of sweet peas stood before a large photograph of Christabel letting off bubbles of's ilvery light, as a fish in an aquarium lets off bubbles of air. A grand picture, Uncle Johnnie thought. But I fear you'll never be a really great whimsical writer, because you can't very well be photographed smoking a pipe.

Susannah returned. "This is the part—hmm—let me see—yes, here: Thank you for your congratulations, dearest. Yes, it is exciting—we never dreamed of anything like this when you were starting me on my 'literary career,' did we? I hope my head won't be turned with all the lovely things you and all the rest of my kind, kind friends, known and unknown, are saying to me. It does make me proud, but at the same time it makes me very

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 humble, and it teaches me all over again that when one gives one's best, simply and from the heart, resisting all temptation to try to make an effect, one touches something universal. It does give one faith in one's fellow creatures, that swift generous response.

She put the letter between elephant and sweet peas, sat up straighter than ever, folded her hands above her belt, and looked at her brother over her spectacles.

"There, Johnnie! I think that answers thy question!"

Irma Goff waited, sitting on the edge of an old red velvet chair, her feet crossed in an easy position, her fingers clutching her bag until they ached. She was going to interview Christabel Caine; her first important interview, and she wouldn't have been given it to do if Bess McCleary, chosen first, hadn't ordered crab salad for lunch yesterday. Oh, make me able to do it all right, she prayed silently. Please, please make it all right.

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 The room was as cold and still as the grave. Clearing her throat sounded loud.

"Mrs. Carey will see you in her sitting-room, madam."

She followed the butler into the lift, and seeing herself in the mirror, tried to put on an expression of indifference, even scorn. If only her knees would stop shaking

Please make it all right

A tea-table with a lace cloth was drawn before the fireplace. The butler lit the fire, drew the curtains, hiding the streaming rain, and left her. My, this is cozy, she said to herself, unconvincingly.

She waited, sunk in a chair so deep and low she felt as if she were lying on the floor. At first she was motionless, listening, not only with her ears, but with her whole body. But presently she began to look about. Would it be all right to snoop a little? She struggled up out of her chair.

Sea-green and ash-pink chintz, a carpet with

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 faded sheaves of wheat and wreaths of flowers. She took out her notebook and wrote:

"Aubosson—Aubuson—Aubousson—Aubusson—???—carpet."

Two corner cabinets held jade trees, with red coral fruits and moon-white mother-of-pearl blossoms, widespread or in cuplike bud. "Chinese cabinets speaking of junk-filled seas," she wrote, and, thinking, I want to make it kind of quaint, like her own writing, added, "Every soft chair seemed to say, do sit in my lap."

Violets all round, bowlfuls! Irma was used to a bunch of them, with stems in green foil and an edging of those other leaves, the hard shiny ones that kept, not masses like these, bowls and bowls of them.

Some books on a low table. O Fair Dove, bound in green morocco; the English edition of Fly in Amber; Fleur d'Oeillet, par Christabel CaineBells of the Temple, by Geoffrey Strade. She opened that one. Young Mr. Strade looked at her sternly from the frontis

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 piece, in his shirt—mercy, how declasay, thought Irma—and with something behind his ear, hollyhock or hibiscus flower. There was a dedication, "To Christabel Caine," and on the fly-leaf, in blackest ink, "C. C. from G. S., to say all the things that can never be said." It had been written so violently that the pen had ploughed through the paper in the stroke beneath the words.

She was looking at it when a voice said: "How kind of you to come to see me," making her heart nearly jump out of her mouth.

She had felt that she looked so nice, in her Alice-blue sports suit, with an Alice-blue hat trimmed with sand-color, sand-colored shoes and stockings, and just a touch of the new orange rouge Bess McCleary was so crazy about. But now, looking at Christabel Caine, in simple filmy black, with pearls, she felt too light, too obvious.

"What a dreadful day! You're very brave to venture out. Come closer to the fire. An

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 open fire is such a friendly thing, don't you think?"

"I certainly do!"

"Fire and flowers and books, and a room is furnished—for me! But I have a fear of becoming possessed by possessions that I'm afraid I carry to extremes. Cream or lemon? Though you really shouldn't take either with this jasmine tea."

"Over our steaming cups of jasmine tea," Irma wrote in her mind. The lacquer cup was so unexpectedly light that she nearly dashed the tea into her face.

Marvelous sandwiches, caviare. Miss Caine—Mrs. Carey—which ought she to say?—took one on her plate, but didn't eat it, and didn't pass them again to Irma, who wanted another awfully. She didn't often get a chance at caviare, and there were other kinds that looked exciting, too. Besides, she had only had time for an ice-cream soda for lunch. She tried saying in her mind, "Might I have another of those very delicious sandwiches?" There they

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 were, and, after all, why shouldn't she? But somehow's he didn't. It would have looked so greedy, with Miss Caine not touching hers.

She had a sudden vision of mamma and Velma and herself making sandwiches in the kitchen back home, trying new kinds out of the women's magazines, sometimes grandly buying a little yellow pot of foie gras, when mamma was going to have the Just Sew Club, or the bunch was coming to play bridge. When they were passed everyone would say, "! how yummy!" or, "Oh, now, listen, Mrs. Goff! I've had nine!" and mamma would answer: "Go on, take some! There's nothing to them!" She felt suddenly weak with homesickness.

I guess I ought to begin interviewing. Oh, dear! How do I begin? Oh, please let me know how to do it all right! Please!

"But with a gush of gratitude she realized that the interview had begun.

"I have a ridiculous terror of being interviewed," Christabel Caine was saying, her voice low, yet so clear that each word stood by it-

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 even that of a living person, according to some authorities,—it was only necessary to kindle some of the incense, and to pronounce certain words, while keeping the mind fixed upon the memory of that person. Then, in the smoke of the incense, the remembered face and form would appear.

In many old Japanese and Chinese books mention is made of a famous story about this incense,—a story of the Chinese Emperor Wu, of the Han dynasty. When the Emperor had lost his beautiful favorite, the Lady Li, he sorrowed so much that fears were entertained for his reason. But all efforts made to divert his mind from the thought of her proved unavailing. One day he ordered some Spirit-Recalling-Incense to be procured, that he might summon her from the dead. His counsellors prayed him to forego his purpose, declaring that the vision could only intensify his grief. But he gave no heed to their advice, and himself performed the rite,—kindling the incense, and keeping his mind fixed upon the memory of the Lady Li. Presently, within the thick blue smoke arising from the incense, the outline of a feminine form became visible. It defined, took tints of life,


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 self, exquisite and apart as if it were inclosed in a glass bell. "You must be kind to me. Because—it sounds absurd, I know—I'm very shy. I think perhaps it comes from my lonely childhood. I must have been a funny little person, growing up alone, in a big old house with a big old garden, talking to the flowers and the butterflies."

"Oh, that's lovely! Do you mind if I take notes? You see, this is my very first important interview"

"Really!"

"You see, I thought newspaper work would be the best training I could get, because I kind of—I guess you certainly must get tired of people saying—I hope to write."

"Really! Have you done anything yet?"

"Well, I did some poems—verses, I guess I should say—that some magazines took, and I want to do enough for a book. I wanted to do a series of Western wildflower poems—my home's in Colorado. Spanish bayonet and In-

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 dian paintbrush. The one I'm really dying to do is Mariposa lily"

"Mariposa lily?"

"M-mariposa's Spanish for butterfly—well, I guess you know that better than I do! White, with sort of faint lilac streaks—it's p-perfectly lovely. It's sort of hard to—it grows up in the m-mountains"

What's the matter with me, stammering this way?—she wailed to herself. But the thought of the luminous lilac-veined petals comforted her.

"I see. Flowers mean a great deal to you, just as they do to me. I've tried to express my love for them in some of my poems."

"Oh, I know! 'White lilac, delicate and cool,' and 'Heather in the mist,' and the one about the scarlet tulip being like the Holy Grail!"

"Those among others. I always have been passionately attached to 'green things growing.' I remember when I was tiny there was an old

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 thousand-leafed rose-bush I used to tell my troubles to."

"Lonely kiddie tells trouble to roses," Irma's pencil flew.

"Before I could write, I used to make up little stories and tell them to the beetles and the hoptoads in the garden. There has been a good deal of loneliness in my life, as it happens, and I hope that it has made me a little more understanding of the loneliness of others. I have always tried so hard never to let the heartaches that have come my way make me sorry for myself. I have tried to turn them into pity and understanding. One wants so terribly just to try to help the hurts a little—not to let suffering make one hard."

"Have you a literary creed, Miss Caine?"

"I believe in truth. I think I could say that is not only my literary creed, but the creed I try to live by. Truth, crystal-clear, like cold water. What if it hurts? I believe in the diamond-hardness of truth. Softness is the end of everything."

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 "Truth—hard—c. water—wh if hurts?" Irma wrote under the note that said "Pity and u-standing. Don't let suff make hard," twisting her head a little, trying to ease the pain in the back of her neck.

"Now, what I have tried to do in O Fair Dove"

"Well, I mustn't trespass on your kindness any longer," Irma said at length. "I just don't know how to thank you!"

"Thank you, with all my heart! Good-by, Miss—uh—. Smedley will show you out."

But Irma had to turn back again to cry:

"Oh, you just can't know how much you mean to people!"

Christabel absent-mindedly ate several sandwiches after Miss Goff left. Generally she disliked being interviewed by women, and certainly it was strange, to put it mildly, of the paper to send a novice. But the little thing had been rather touching, she thought, pop-

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 ping a whole sandwich into her mouth, and she was glad she had given her such a good time. How naïve she had been in her surprise at finding a celebrity so human!

The mild glow faded, boredom and restlessness crept over her. She roamed about the room, picking up a book, putting it down, shaking the sofa pillows into shape, stretching out her arms and yawning, yawns that ended in moans. She was sick and tired of this room and everything in it, the wishy-washy chintz, Marie Laurencin's gray-faced ladies with their small strawberry-ice-cream pink mouths matching their strawberry-ice-cream pink ribbons, the "amusing" shell flowers—amusing! Evelyn Thompson had done the decorating for her. She liked helping poor Evelyn, who had had hard times since her divorce. She had given her work, and sent little Roberta to the twins' dancing class. But the room had never expressed her real self. Marvin Marcy-Jones was going to do it over for her. There was a square of purple carpet, to try, on the floor,

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 and lengths of orange stuff trailed on to it, from a chair. Evelyn's feelings would be hurt, and she herself probably wouldn't like it any better. Still, Marvin felt that he really had caught her personality. Perhaps he had. Perhaps it would be all right.

Oh, what do I want to do? Shall I call up Marvin? She drifted to the telephone, pausing to write on the pad beside it, "Mariposa lilies." Standing tapping her cheek with the pencil, she decided she didn't want to see Marvin. Elliott? Austin? Gobby?

She picked up the telephone and gave a number.

"Is Count du Sanglier there? . . . Thank you. . . . Mrs. Carey." Then: "Maurice, this is Christabel. Oh, you nice person! I needed that!"

She felt her twittering nerves grow still, her whole being relaxed to velvet smoothness, velvet softness.

"Maurice, take pity on me! If I don't put on a flame-colored frock with no back and go

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 somewhere to dance tonight I shall die—and Curtis is in Washington. Somewhere with very loud jazz and cocktails in coffee-cups"

Listening to his answer, she sank into a low chair, smiling a little, shutting her eyes.

"Don't be silly! . . . I'll tell you when I see you—maybe! . . . Au 'voir"

Putting the receiver into its hook, she lay with the telephone against her breast, in a silence that still vibrated with Maurice's words.

When she finished writing her interview that night Irma Goff was still too excited to sleep, in spite of the hour. So she wrote to mamma and Velma, telling them all about it.

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 the Metropolitan Museum. But I didn't interview her there, but in front of the open fire in her own boudoir, wasn't that sweet of her, just like I was one of her intimate friends, a simply darling room, with heaps of violets absolutely everywhere and the most marveelious tea, caviare sandwiches 'n' everything. Well, Mamma and Velma, you can imagine the thrill of meeting though you can bet I didn't let her see how excited I was. I was kind of scared, too, but as it turned out, I needn't have been, because after we got friendly she confessed that she was very shy and actually had been scared of me—could you believe it?

"I kept thinking about Mrs. Coffy's paper on her at the Club last winter, and what she'd think if she could see me! She's simply beautiful, very young-looking in spite of having two adorable twin kiddies, 5 yrs. old, but kind of sad-looking and quiet, and all in black. I wonder if she's in mourning for anyone? I didn't like to ask—I kept feeling as if she'd

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 had some terrible sorrow sometime and that's what makes her work so wonderful. It wasn't her husband, because she spoke simply marvelously of him and what a help his interest was to her in her work. She was wonderful about my writing, really interested. It's made me crazy to do something worth while. When I was going I said 'I'm going to try to write harder than I ever have in my life, this very evening!' and she said 'Do you know, so am I!' It sort of thrills me to think of her sitting there all alone writing. She told me some nights she works all night long!

"Just as I was going she picked up an enormous bunch of the violets out of one of the bowls and gave them to me. I have them here on my desk, in front of a great big signed photograph she gave me!!!"

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March morning, as every morning, Minnie pulled back the blue silk curtains, closed the windows, lit the fire, and turned on the bath water. Wakened by gentle noises, Christabel stretched, yawned, put her white feet into blue mules held by kneeling Minnie, wrapped herself in blue silk embroidered with daisies bigger than her head, and trailed to the bathroom.

Steam fragrant with perfume created to express her personality veiled black men peeping from behind orchid-dripping trees, painted on her bathroom walls by young Boris Orlovski, a cousin of the Czar's, some people thought. She was wonderful to exiled Russians. "More wonderful to the men than the women," catty Mrs. Wickett said, but this Christabel felt was not worth noticing, it was so evidently caused by jealousy.

"It's rather amusing how ladies give them-

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 selves away!" she had said to Gobby, when he indignantly reported Mrs. Wickett's remark. "I did my best to make Boris and one or two others be nice to Adéle Wickett when they were all here one afternoon, and they were just as naughty as they could be." She laughed tolerantly. "Poor Adéle! Naturally she consoles herself by blaming me!"

Besides, she had had several little Russian countesses in national costume sing at her teas.

Invitations, letters from strangers:

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"May a lonely shut-in thank you for having helped her pass weary wakey hours when other folks were fast asleep"

"I am a Junior in High School. I have been given you as a subject for an essay, and would be obliged if you would tell me some facts about yourself that would be of interest, also what caused you to write each of your books and something about what you have wished to express in them, and anything else you can think of"

(For a Dear you are and ever will be, for writing your Beautiful Books)

"I'm not quite a stranger, for although you've never heard of me, I know you intimately, and I've chuckled with you and I've wept with you (Yes, truly!) and in all my life

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 nothing, except feeling the wind blow through my hair in a sailboat, and stealing (don't look so shocked!) a sprig of lavender, sun-kissed and bee-beset, from Ann Hathaway's garden, has given me quite the same sort of utterly joyous delight your books have"

From the clipping bureau came best-seller lists. O Fair Dove. O Fair Dove. O Fair Dove. Reviews. She read:

"Its lovely pages glow with a sort of luminous tenderness, a 'light that never was, on sea or land.

"If more novels like O Fair Dove came to the critic's table, how much happier life would be! Written with exquisite sensitiveness and poignant beauty, this whimsical romance demands the use of the important word genius"

So buoyant, she felt she hardly touched the pillow. Drinking the delicious hot coffee, she dreamily reread "exquisite sensitiveness—poignant beauty—genius—" When Curtis looked

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 in to say good morning and good-by she returned his kiss warmly.

"Good-by, darlingest! Isn't it a day straight from heaven?" She kissed her, fluttered them toward the door, and, still smiling, drew out the next clipping.

"Ever since women discovered that novel-writing is infinitely preferable to housekeeping, and much less exacting, they have written innumerable stories. O Fair Dove, by Christabel Caine, is just another of them. The story, buried under would-be whimsicality, is ordinary, the characters are puppets, and the ending is a relief. The exhausted reader may well wonder whether he or the authoress has wasted the more time."

There was a pain in her chest. How could people be so unkind? How could even jealousy make them so cruel?" She was terribly, terribly hurt. Not that she minded honest criticism, she welcomed it, but this was wanton abuse. With hands that shook she tore the clipping into tiny pieces—tiny

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 The twins came tearing in, flinging their arms around her, scrambling up on the bed. She put her hands over her ears.

"Gently, darlings! Mother doesn't feel very well this morning. Marigold! Be careful of that tray! Now go to Mademoiselle at once, both of you!"

With the match that lit her cigarette she touched the torn clipping on the ash tray. It writhed and turned to ash. "luminous tenderness she read again genius" she read again. "genius." "Some more reviews for you to paste in," she said, handing them to Ellen Beach, who came in with her engagement book.

"May I read them? Oh, what nice ones! Isn't it marvelous, there hasn't been a single unfavorable review of O Fair Dove, has there? Not that there ought to be, only it's so wonderful that people really appreciate it."

"What do I have to do today, Ellen? Luncheon at Pierre's, Ivan Korovine's class, tea with Austin Weeks, and the Treasure

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 Seekers here for dinner. I'll see Mrs. Briton about dinner now."

"Mrs. Caine's train gets in at four."

"Oh, Ellen, no! Is it today mother's coming? Well, send the big car for her, and tell her I'm heartbroken and I'll be back just as early as I possibly can. That makes it awfully awkward about dinner"

"I needn't come"

"Ellen, don't be silly! With your young man coming? No, I'll manage somehow. Mother may be too tired to want to come down, anyway."

Mrs. Britton entered. Spring lamb, green peas. The telephone rang. Ellen asked over her shoulder if Mrs. Carey would see some one from the World? Minnie asked, which dress? Asparagus, perhaps, instead of a salad. The telephone rang. Would Mr. and Mrs. Carey dine with Mrs. Wickett next Thursday, with bridge afterward? Beige dress, Minnie, and the dark brown hat. Strawberry mousse in a

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 spun sugar basket. Mrs. Carey is extremely sorry

She was ready to go out at last, in the red-and-black car, so small, so smart, looking as if one wound it up with a key, with Bates seeming so a part of it that one almost expected to see a tiny crack running down his front, splitting a black tin cap and a pink tin nose, one felt that an iron tail must run into a hole in the seat, to keep him steady.

Buying her own books, she thought, how excited this little person would be if he knew I was the author! She felt like a queen incognito.

"Did I understand you to say twelve copies of O Fair Dove? Is that correct?"

And she answered, graciously, laughingly:

"Alas, yes! That's the penalty of writing a book, so many people expect the poor author to give them copies!"

His eyes and his mouth were three round O's, she thought, walking up Fifth Avenue, amused and touched. Well, that was a real thrill in

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 his dull day. She could hear him telling the other clerks: "That was Christabel Caine! That lady I was just waiting on!"

The day was so lovely that she had sent the car away. Turning down a side street, she went into the Catholic church where she liked to say her prayers or meditate. Sometimes she longed to be a Catholic. If only she could stop thinking, how restful it would be.

Beyond the rood screen lights wavered in white and blue cups, banked into shapes of hearts and crosses, on either side of the altar, where a nun knelt, rose to dust the vases of artificial lilies, knelt again. All work should be done that way, with love and prayer, Christabel thought. Other nuns knelt motionless. She was kneeling with them. She was kneeling alone, the bride of Christ, lost in ecstasy, while out in the church, heartbroken, adoring, knelt Elliott and Maurice and the new poet who was coming to dinner tonight. She almost added Curtis, but the thought of him floated out without embodying.

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 Oh, to be there, safe and at peace, free of earthly possessions, free of self-hood, wrapped in love forever!

But out on the Avenue again, she knew that God wanted His children to be happy and free in His sunshine! Everything was holy, if you had eyes to see. She looked with seeing eyes at a top-shaped female in black satin, at a taxi that came squealing to the curb in answer to her look, at her florist's window.

"Good morning, Mr. Johnson . . . Yes, indeed, divine! Quantities of flowers, please—mimosa for the drawing room, I think—you know how much I need. I'm just going to be banal and have a few tulips for the library, those flame-colored ones and a few mauve. . . . Oh, I don't know, three or four dozen. Now what have you, really intriguing, for the dinner table? I'm using the ruby glass tonight. . . . Not, not a very big dinner, twenty people, and not a bit the roses-silver-pheasants type"

What a difference it makes, being human with people, she thought, as Mr. Johnson flung

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 himself into originality, bringing flowers like lobster claws for her inspection, flowers like strings of doll's china eyes, as he presented her with a spray of jasmine to wear.

She turned back, as she was leaving, to order a big purple basket of double and single violets for the Glenworthy girls, Clothilde, Eugénie, Ellaline, poor old maids, relics of her mother's girlhood. They adored her, and she had seen their letters to her mother, telling of all the wonderful things she had done for them. She did try to be thoughtful. When she had them to tea she was never at home to other callers, for she told herself they wouldn't want to meet anyone, they were so shabby, coming in scarecrow finery, always bringing some pathetic present. Last time, half a dozen drying daffodils with lots of asparagus fern, lost in her roomful of flowers. "We tried to get Mariposa lilies because of that lovely poem of yours your dear mother very kindly sent us, but the florists didn't seem to know what they were." She had been so touched, and had filled their

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 arms from the drawing-room vases when they went. She loved to heap gifts on them, poor old things—an armful of novels, a nearly full box of marrons glacés. That last time, Elliott had called up to ask if he might come to tea, and she had had to hustle them off. She had been meaning to do something nice to make up. She would ask them to dinner, tomorrow, with mother, just a nice intimate time, with no one else, and then they would all go to the Racine revival that Countess du Sanglier had arranged and that Mrs. Towne had sent her tickets for. That would be a real thrill for them, and it would be a delight to hear some pure French. She wrote on her card, to go with the violets, "Will you dine and go to the theater tomorrow? I'll send the motor at seven. Most affectionately, C. C. C."

Why did so few people realize that the only sure way of being happy was to make others happy?

It was a day for a new hat. Everyone in the shop swam at her.

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 "Isn't that peculiar, Mrs. Carey, Miss M'ree was just this morning speaking of you, wasn't she, girls? We have some lovely things to show you—Gladys, bring that Maria Guy with the banana ribbon—and listen, dear, the blue ballibuntl, you know, the one with the choux over the ear, and, honey! Listen! Tell Miss M'ree Mrs. Carey's here, I know she'll want to see her."

Marie herself appeared. "Misss-us Carey, good morning! No, no, no! Take these away. Bring me the little black horsehair with the nose veil that hasn't been shown yet."

"Oh, adorable!"

"Doesn't moddom look adorable?"

"A work of art," Marie pronounced.

"A picture!"

"It looks just like moddom, doesn't it?"

That was in an undertone, for her to overhear. She was on to their ways! But it did, it was a divine hat.

"I must take it with me! I must wear it out to lunch. Will you call me a taxi, please?"

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 Waiting for it, she remembered to ask about Miss Lola's headaches, Miss Vera's sister, who used to be in the shop before her marriage. "What a memory!" they exclaimed, pleased and flattered, and through their exclamations she heard Miss Pearl saying to another customer, just audibly:

"Christabel Caine, who wrote O Fair Dove."

Alfred was scurrying into her sitting room with orange tulips. She had caught the servants by surprise, for she had said she wouldn't be in until after lunch. But she was human with him, too; she saw his face relax a little as he went to get her a cocktail.

A press photographer took her picture as she entered Pierre's, a careful ten minutes late. Maurice kissed her hand and noticed her hat, the head waiter had a charmed murmur as he led them to their table, friends saluted as they passed.

"Come to a movie after lunch. There's a new one with the intriguing Charlot."

"Alas! I have to go on to my class. Ivan

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 Korovine, you know, the Russian who had something to do with—with—I can't remember his name for the moment, the one who had that place in France. He teaches you to free yourself through color and rhythm, and he has simply marvelous ideas about sex sublimation."

"Ah, little grown-up girl! You think you are too old for a doll, so you play with your soul!"

"Play, Maurice! It isn't play, it's intense concentrated work. I come away limp. But it makes life seem a very different thing. I don't think I ever before this year, fully realized its intensity and reality."

"Come to the movies. Movies and jazz and burlesque queens and—what else? Vermilion and magenta—seem to me as real intensities as you'll find in a rather vague world."

"Well, of course, everyone admits that Charlie Chaplin is our one great tragedian. But"

"If you don't, you will be sorry tomorrow, when I am to be very ill."

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 Through the new nose veil she made round questioning eyes.

"Certainly. Haven't you heard that maman is patronne for an evening of Racine?"

"And you, too, dread it?"

"No, I simply avoid it."

"Moi aussi!"

Mademoiselle could go with mother and the Glenworthy girls. It would be a glimpse of heaven for her and she could translate anything they couldn't understand.

"So come to the movies!"

She yielded, laughing. "But I must be through in time to get down to a studio on Ninth Street for tea. A man is doing a portrait of my precious twinnies that I promised to come and criticize. Oh, Maurice, I really dread it! I can't tell you why—yes, I think I will, after all! You see, I'm terribly afraid he's in love with me, poor darling—I can tell you this, you being you, without being afraid that you'll think I'm conceited, it's simply that it's such a problem, I don't know what to

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 slowly became luminous; and the Emperor recognized the form of his beloved. At first the apparition was faint; but it soon became distinct as a living person, and seemed with each moment to grow more beautiful. The Emperor whispered to the vision, but received no answer. He called aloud, and the presence made no sign. Then unable to control himself, he approached the censer. But the instant that he touched the smoke, the phantom trembled and vanished.

Japanese artists are still occasionally inspired by the legends of the Hangon-kō. Only last year, in Tōkyō, at an exhibition of new kakemono, I saw a picture of a young wife kneeling before an alcove wherein the smoke of the magical incense was shaping the shadow of the absent husband.

Although the power of making visible the forms of the dead has been claimed for one sort


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 do, and I need advice. Do you think you could put yourself in the position of a gentleman laid low by my fatal charm?"

"C'est moi."

"You see, he's such a sensitive person that if I'm horrid to him, as I suppose I should be, he might do anything, and if I'm kind to him, that's even worse! I want to help him, and I don't know what to do. It makes me triste à pleurer! I only tell you because it's rather an interesting situation psychologically, and because you'll never know who the man is."

"Don't begin to worry about the men who love you, or you'll have time for nothing else."

"Oh, Maurice! Flatteur!" She smiled, delicately self-mocking. But her heart gave a skip. I've never seen him look so—so as if he were holding something in. Oh, my poor Maurice! not you, too? And aloud she cried, in a voice that annoyed her by sounding fluttered:

"Oh, I don't think any pastry! Well—one of those strawberry tarts, because it's spring,

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 no mistake in the case; and accordingly, slipping unperceived out of the house, he hastened to the magistrates and laid his plaint. Justice, in the good town of Hirschberg, had, at that period, the repute of great vigilance and activity in all cases where the expenses were sure to be paid; though ’twas said her progress was little better than snail-paced in mere profitless ex officio proceedings. The same thing, for that matter, has been insinuated of other times and places. Our Israelite, who knew the way of Hirschberg, when he found the judge hesitate to receive his deposition, pointed out to him that the wallet of the accused contained a corpus delicti far more than sufficient to pay handsomely all fees, expenses, and perquisites whatever. These golden spectacles at once cleared the magistrate’s vision, and he forthwith issued his warrant, armed with which, and with rusty pikes and halberts, a body of catchpoles surrounded the inn pointed out by the Jew; the more daring of them then rushed, with firm determination, into the common room, furiously seized the unconscious offender, and dragged him to the hall of justice.

“Who art thou?” demanded the judge, with a stern voice, “and whence comest thou?”—“I am an honest tailor by business,” replied the young man, in a firm, fearless tone, “my name is Benedict; I come from Liebenau; I work in my master’s house.”—“Hast thou not attacked this Jew in the forest, beaten him


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 and if I can't eat any tea I shall tell Austin Weeks you're to blame."

When Curtis came home from the office there was either silence, that meant Christabel was out, or the twitter of voices as he passed the library door on the way to his room. And although he vaguely knew that the voices were settling things, beauty, truth, real art, immortality, sex in its relation to this or that, and the meaning of life, it never occurred to him that it could matter whether or not the sound remained twitter or was resolved into words. Sometimes Christabel called him in, tipping a cheek to his polite kiss, clinging to him with a white hand, asking, "Darling, some tea?" Sometimes she allowed him to tiptoe upstairs to relax on his sofa with the market quotations and a highball.

This evening there was silence. He caught a glimpse of Smedley arranging a centerpiece, launching himself across so big a table that Curtis knew Christabel and he must be giving

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 a dinner. He would have liked to see his children, but it annoyed Nurse to have him come in at supper-time. She said it made them show off, sticking out their lips at their lovely cereal, and jumping about, and later Michael, who was easily excited, was apt to imagine lions under the bed. And Christabel supported her.

No sign of Christabel. Out with an affinity, probably. I believe I'll get an affinity, myself. Adele Wickett? She's pretty, even if Christabel doesn't think so, and she nearly dies laughing when I tell her a joke. Or Helen Vanessi, with her black hair low on her white neck, and those eyes—oh, boy! She likes me, too, he thought.

Well, he would just have a look at the stock quotations. Dropping down on his sofa with a sigh, the paper slid from his hand. I am very, very tired, he thought. A hard day. Donelly says he can get me three cases of the real prewar stuff. A very hard day. That lobster at lunch was certainly nice and tender

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 He yawned, arching his back, stretching out his arms, grasping air.

Poor old Harry. I'll never see that money again

Keep my left arm straight—left arm straight—a white ball ran across a stretch of green and trickled into the cup. Ought to get dressed—very very tired—very very very tired

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porter made Mrs. Caine trot to keep up Tin him. Between the way he hurried and the people who pushed between them, she had hard work keeping her eye on her bag, with her silver brush and mirror in it, and her aquamarine brooch set in seed pearls. But when he asked, "Taxi?" over his shoulder, and she answered with quiet dignity, "I think a private car will meet me," his manner changed entirely. And when he saw the big Rolls-Royce, with chauffeur and footman, he became so polite that she had to add another quarter to the quarter she had clutched, ready, ever since she got off the train.

She sat up very straight, looking at her reflection in the front window, made into a mirror by the two impressive plum-covered backs. She felt shy and conspicuous. But she scolded herself. Don't be so silly! Nobody's looking at you! Relax! She relaxed firmly.

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 The house was full of flowers. "Well, you look very festive, Smedley," she said, giving the butler the bunch of early daffodils from the garden she had brought for Christabel.

"Yes, madam. We're having a dinner tonight."

A dinner! Oh, dear, she thought, there'll be a lot of celebrities who won't want to talk to me. I wish to goodness there wasn't going to be a dinner!

Thank Heaven, she had made over her black evening dress, after a picture in Vogue. Fred said it looked fine. And, telling herself that no one would look at her, she was exhilarated by the thought that ran beneath—it does look nice!

It was late when Christabel rushed in, her cheeks glowing pink, her eyes starry.

"Oh, mother, mother, mother! Oh, darling, how heavenly to have you! I was heartbroken that I couldn't meet you! Did they tell you? It was just one of those things—oooh!"

"You're crushing—your—lovely gardenias,

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 dearie!" Mrs. Caine protested, her mouth full of fragrant fur. Christabel released her and held her at arm's length.

"Let me look at you. Oh, mother darling, you've gotten thinner! That's naughty of you. And you look so tired, dear."

"I'm not a bit"

"You're going to have a real rest while you're here. First, you're going to have a delicious hot bath with geranium salts, and then a nice little dinner on a tray, here in front of the fire. I wish I could have it with you, just us two, but, alas! we've got some stupid people dining here. I dread the thought! I won't inflict anyone on you tonight, darling, but tomorrow, when you're all rested, I've planned a little dinner, especially for you, and a theater party."

"Christabel, I really don't feel a bit tired"

"I don't believe you ever think about yourself long enough to know whether you feel tired or not, but now you have some one to think

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 about you in spite of yourself. How's my darling daddy?"

"Very well, and sent heaps of love. But Uncle Johnnie's been quite ill."

"Oh, too bad!"

"They think he may have to come"

"Heavens! Look at the time! There's nothing I'd love better than to sit down and have a nice long talk, darling, and hear all the news, but if I don't fly"

"Christabel! Who's coming to dinner tomorrow?" Mrs. Caine called after her, and she called back:

"The Glenworthy girls! Won't that be nice?"

Mrs. Caine went and had a long look at her evening dress, on its padded hanger. She saw herself coming down the broad stairs. "My mother" "My mother" She turned graciously from celebrity to celebrity, surprising them by her intelligence, her unaffected charm. Then she made a face, saying "The Glenworthy girls!" under her breath.

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 But, taking her bath, wrapping herself in a heated towel soft as deep moss, she saw herself against a background of old oak paneling, hothouse roses, Smedley's shirt front, fragile in filmy black, being gracious to the poor old Glenworthys.

"Christabel spoils me so. She thinks nothing is too good for her mother! And she worries about me ridiculously. Why, last night"

She got into the orchid bed-jacket Christabel had given her long ago. It was as nice as ever, for she only used it on her visits here. It almost hadn't been worn at all.

Nice Bessie, who never made her feel shy, as Smedley and Alfred and Minnie did, brought in her tray, and she said, graciously: "Well, Bessie! How have you been?" Dinnerbeen? Dinner [sic] was delicious. Christabel had even remembered how she loved grapefruit. And there was a cluster of her favorite violets on the tray. Who but Christabel would think of a thing like that?"

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 of incense only, the burning of any kind of incense is supposed to summon viewless spirits in multitude. These come to devour the smoke. They are called Jiki-kō-ki, or “incense-eating goblins;” and they belong to the fourteenth of the thirty-six classes of Gaki (prêtas) recognized by Japanese Buddhism. They are the ghosts of men who anciently, for the sake of gain, made or sold bad incense; and by the evil karma of that action they now find themselves in the state of hunger-suffering spirits, and compelled to seek their only food in the smoke of incense.


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 Hearing gentle snores, Christabel sighed, smiled, and went in to wake Curtis with a kiss. "Darling, you must get dressed! It's almost dinner-time."

"Aw-w-igh" he agreed through a yawn. "Who's coming tonight?"

"The Treasure Seekers."

"Oh, Gosh! That lot!"

"What do you mean by that lot?"

"Oh, all showing off and being sensitive souls, and the men a lot of sissies."

"Curtis, you hurt me when you speak of my friends that way."

"And not a pretty woman in the lot."

She kissed his arm lightly. "But they're all so worth while. Now do hurry, dearest."

She hadn't decided what to wear. Now Minnie stood waiting, while Christabel looked at rows of dresses. There hung the silver-blue gown, with silver stars thick about the hem, from Laura Burke's shop. She had said to Laura, "I'll wear it and advertise the shop to everybody," and Laura had cried gratefully:

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