to her empty of the least congenial promise, like the destiny of an unlucky stranger. And because her voice had failed, she now doubted the power of her charms. She no longer felt sure that a determined woman could dominate any man. She recalled her longing to conquer some day one who was strong among his fellows, holding himself aloof in his renown and wealth. She might never glimpse the regions that such men inhabited!

The white bullocks and their glimmering treasure had melted into the north.

Averting her face, she saw Cyril staring at her dreamily. For the moment she had forgotten Cyril, who might become the secretary of an embassy, whose wife would then be at liberty to make her bow before a throne.

"How restful it is with you!" she sighed. "You don't torment me with a lot of condolences! Come, let 's go on. Let's go so far to-day that even sadness falls behind."

The carriage rolled on between mellow walls overhung with ilex-trees. Aglaia reclined against the cushions in a pose that emphasized her exquisite fragility. Cyril, with busy eyes, adored this marvel whose physical softness and mental potency both seemed necessary to his nature.

But that very rareness of hers disheartened him. In Aglaia he seemed to discern the estranging promises of a unique career. While he was still doing the routine-work of embassies, she would doubtless have become the greatest singer in the world. It no longer occurred to him that prima donnas, while very well in their own way, were hardly the sort that English country gentlemen could marry. He only thought, "How insignificant I must appear to her when she contemplates that future-the frantic cities, the bouquets of kings, the foreign titles laid before her feet!" He

tortured himself with the picture of some burly, bearded foreign prince, some Russian or Austrian grand duke, gathering her at last into his arms-a morganatic bride!

And of course such graces had already troubled many hearts. In her own land

what men had loved her? And did they still mourn her absence? And did she remember all their vows with tenderness, with a divine compunction?

They regained Florence in the dusk.
But one day they visited Fiesole.

They had drunk their tea on the empty hotel terrace, overlooking the valley of the Arno. In the air, despite the sunshine, on the hillsides, for all the fullness of perennial foliage, there was a threat of change, a hint that many spells which had enhanced this intercourse were weakening.

In the hotel some one began to play the "Vissi d'Arte" from "Tosca," the music so poignantly associated with Aglaia's failure. She was unable to repress a gasp of pain. "What's the matter?"

Pressing her napkin to her lips, she lowered her head.

"That piano?"

Gradually her form grew tense, as if her whole being was pervaded by a final resolution. And slowly, so that the change in her might be complete, she raised a face that he had never seen before, with tremulous lips, with misty eyes, with a blush like the transfiguration of a lily in the sunset. Her voice, recalling the doves round Galileo's tower, answered:

"The 'Vissi d'Arte,' that you were playing in the pension the day we met." With fallen jaws, he uttered: "Aglaia!"

"Then you do care for me?" "Oh, Aggie!"

"You never actually spoke. I had to conclude you did n't really want me." "Not want you!"

"At any rate," she faltered, as her lashes veiled her eyes, "now you know the cause of all my sadness."

He sat there a-tremble, trying to realize that this divinity was going to condescend to his embrace.

"You, with your wonderful future!"

"No," she breathed, with a gesture of sublime renunciation, "I shall give up my career in opera now. I shall devote myself wholly to your interests."

And there, high above the city that had been for him the birthplace, and for her

the sepulcher, of fine ambitions, they gazed toward a far horizon, which neither could hope to reach without the other.

While driving back to Florence, they decided to be married that week, and leave at once for England.

A superb dawn ushered in the weddingday.

The American church in the Piazza del Carmine resounded with the march from "Lohengrin." Before the flower-strewn altar the minister began to read the service:

"Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this company, to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony."

All that little world stood there motionless-the three lieutenants, whose dress uniforms blazed in the sunshine of high noon; Mme. von Schwandorf, whose bergamot suppressed the perfume of the roses; even M. Zolande, in hired evening dress, which gave him the look of a middle-aged rake betrayed by a sunrise. Thallie and Frossie, who resembled two Watteau damsels in dresses just alike, held their bunches of roses rigidly before them. Their faces, pale with solemnity, kept sinking forward, as if they themselves felt that trepidation which is supposed to be the bride's. But when the minister asked, "Who giveth this woman?" all eyes turned to Mr. Goodchild.

Aurelius felt the pathos of his rôle. Now there came back to him the picture of a baby peeping across her supper-plate in Zenasville. He saw her, too, in maidenhood, when it would have seemed like sacrilege to think that some day a stranger might possess her budding comeliness. But now he was surrendering her to the stranger; and soon her sisters would travel the same road, and he be left alone.

"Who giveth this woman?"

What emotions did Aurelius not long to show in his response! Resignation to life, the stoicism of an Epictetus: for Aggie, a swift epitome of his paternal love; for Cyril, a magnanimous assurance of his trust. And oh, to express at the same time

the keenest pang of all-that the one whom he had lost full twenty years before was not beside him at such a moment in the flesh! Raising his head, he strove to put all those thoughts into the most dramatic line that fate had yet given him. But his face, with its tangled, grizzled beard, its transparent temples, its aquiline features sharpened still more by grief, only twitched spasmodically, like the visage of a saint enduring martyrdom. A hoarse rattle issued from his throat. the first time in his life Aurelius missed

a cue.

For

A wedding-breakfast awaited them at the pension.

The table, in the red dining-room, was heaped with all the remaining flowers of the garden. The centerpiece was a frosted cake, two feet high, surmounted by a cupola in which appeared a little sugar bride and bridegroom clasping hands.

On the sideboard the wedding-presents were displayed.

Mr. Goodchild had given a gold necklace in Etruscan style, and assurance that Aggie should receive one third of the Outwall legacy. Frossie and Thallie had bought a silver tea-set covered with cherubs. Camillo furnished a table-cloth of Florentine embroidery, Fava an urn made of lava from Mount Etna, Azeglio half a dozen silver tooth-picks. Mme. von Schwandorf's gift was a mammoth pincushion, frilled with lace, and painted

with two hearts skewered by the dart of Cupid. As for M. Zolande, he proffered an oil-sketch made in other days-of lions devouring some Christian maidens. Nothing had yet arrived from Reginald, Mme. Linkow, or John Holland.

At last the company was seated round the board. For the moment silence reigned, produced by a general embarrass

ment.

But a sound of excited whispering entered from the hall, where the patrons of the pension were gathered. At the end of the dining-room, behind piled-up tables, the house-servants craned their necks to see the bride. Giannina, the maid, uttered cries of admiration; Domenico, the doorporter, had smuggled in his wife and children; for a time there showed among those eager faces the cook's cap, the tousled heads of scullions.

Federico and his assistants, wearing white cotton gloves, majestically served the repast.

With Mme. von Schwandorf, they were ten. Aurelius could not imagine why M. Farazounis had not come. He missed Dr. Numble and the Inchkins, far away in Zenasville. His conscience smote him because he had not insisted on inviting all the people in the hall.

At least they should view the weddingpresents!

The menu offered caviar, double bouillon, a mayonnaise of sole, chickens in aspic, a crayfish salad, ices. The glasses, at Aggie's instigation, brimmed with champagne; all waited for Mr. Goodchild to propose, "The bride!" But Aurelius seemed inclined to wait until the feast was over. The young men philosophically began to drink their wine.

The Cavalry of Magenta then displayed its gallantry. Lieutenant Fava broke the ice:

"Happy the sun that kisses such a bride!"

"These roses are not so fair," averred Azeglio, debonair even in defeat.

The three soldiers declared that the bridegroom must wear a talisman. They wanted to know if he had sold himself to

the devil in exchange for so much bliss. They bombarded him with complimentary jests in French, broken English, and Italian. Their high spirits soon conquered every one but Cyril.

The bridegroom was in a nightmare. He had not imagined that marriage meant this horrible publicity and levity. He felt like a man who enters a longsought sanctuary, to find buffoons cavorting round the altar. Still, he managed to mask these sensations with a ghastly grin. To the rest he seemed merely to display the nuptial embarrassment that was wanting in the bride.

But even Aggie's smile grew strained when Aurelius stood up.

The father swept the table with a humid glance. His voice vibrated as he began:

"Friends, we are here to celebrate a sacrament, to wish the high contracting parties happiness. But of that blessing they already seem assured by the celestial auguries: Aglaia was born with the planet Venus in the sign of Aries, Cyril with Venus in the sympathetic sign of Sagittarius. From far countries Providence brought these two beautifully congenial natures into propinquity. Each may say, with the ancient poet:

"The wind from Ilium to Cicon's shore Hath driven me!

"And surely, even without our prayers, God will bring to a glorious consummation this mystery of His handiwork. Yes, let them bear away to Albion our perfect confidence rather than our hopes: for just the touching sincerity of their betrothal must have won our Lord's benevolence. Each will find in the other that complement necessary to the highest unions, which Emerson has described. Each may say henceforth, in the immortal lines of Bayard Taylor:

"I love thee, I love but thee,

With a love that shall not die
Till the sun grows cold,
And the stars are old,

And the leaves of the judgment book
unfold!"

seemed to rise from nowhere and beset the bridegroom.

With a frenzied gesture, he hurled a pocketful of silver upon the pavement. The coins, the crutches, the beggars, with their bandaged feet and slings, all struck the ground at once.

Aggie was in her father's arms; her sisters clung weeping to her cloak. There fell a shower of rice, and Cyril discovered on his cane a brave white-ribbon bow.

No longer rational, moved as if by a madman's strength, he thrust his wife into the carriage.

"Drive like the devil!" he screamed as a slipper whizzed past his ear. With a jerk the vehicle started; Cyril lost his hat. "Never mind! Go on, I say!" The coachman cracked his whip, the carriage careened, the horse turned the corner like a doubling hare.

But still Mr. Goodchild, Frossie, and Thallie stood staring down the street. They could hardly believe that Aggie was not coming back to them by dinner-time. They could not yet realize that the Graces were no longer three.

MRS.

RS. BLAISDELL sat in the shade of the elm-tree while her son Tom and his wife Ada wandered about the place, surveying present growths and making plans for future ones. She followed them with her eyes and she tried to concentrate on their movements, but her thoughts kept beating away from their activities.

The Blaisdell place included an acre of lawn, carefully cultivated, running to the street, and many acres of land, premeditately uncultivated, running to the sound. The ground sloped both ways from the big, pleasant colonial house. In front, the slope drew after it a train of lawn that was like emerald plush. That plush was broken by haphazard growths, the product of a century and a half of care, that offered privacy here, shade there, pleasing combinations of color and form everywhere. The tall wine-glass elm, the huge, bulbous smoke-bush, two powdered fir-trees, the trio of slim, closely furled cypresses, the group of white birches that shivered in their filmy spring draperiesall had disposed themselves at the right distances. Here and there were flowerplots, squares and circles of freshly spaded earth.

A robin, just a few feet away, utterly unawed by the still figure in the invalid's chair, seized the wriggling end of a fat worm, tugged at it so hard that, after stretching to an extraordinary exiguity, it broke, and he fell ignominiously backward. An automobile chugged along the road, dropping a mellow-horn gurgle as

it went. The electric car, which came every quarter of an hour, jingled past, crowded with people.

Mrs. Blaisdell made herself think of that motor and that car filled with people. They were all going to the beach; the heat had driven them there. Years ago she had dreaded almost equally the appearance in Wraymouth of the automobile and the electric car; they had come almost simultaneously. At first she had vowed to put a hedge between her and their clamor ; but she never did that. She came to accept them first as conveniences, then as comforts, as companions. With a car passing the door every fifteen minutes, she could call frequently on friends whom previously she had seen only at long intervals; and of course they called as frequently on her. Almost always somebody waved from the car as it ambled past. It was the same with many other things -the electric light, for instance. When they placed one near the left-hand corner of the place, it seemed to her that she could not endure its vulgar intrusion; and yet she had grown to look upon that as a kind of companion, too. She even admired the gush of purple-silver light that poured from it upon the fluttering white birches, giving in winter a veil to their slim nudity and in the summer an additional glitter to their gleaming draperies. She really thought the effect of the electric light more beautiful than moonlight, especially in these early days of spring; but she had never told anybody this.

Changes came all the time,-she had