Suddenly Cynthia laughed. She had never been to Egypt. With all her going up and down the world she had never been there. She was saving it for the last-for him. Often when she had seen its sun-scorched coast dim from the deck of her steamer plowing up and down the Mediterranean, she had looked and exulted. "Some day!" she whispered to it. So she had waited for it. Together they would live and dream its everlasting age-old romance. She did not know how or when it would come, what would be the circumstance; she only knew if she were true, if she believed and waited, it would come at last.

But now love was dead. There was nothing to wait for any longer. She would never see Egypt, never! She would flee from it as from the plague. "Egypt!" she whispered; and sobs came, dry shakings of her whole body. What a fool she had been! What a simple fool! To think that love would last! To feed on dreams for so long! Why had she not taken the gift when it was offered? Once in a lifetime, she told herself, only once; and she had thrown the glory away!

As days went by she walked or drove, or sat in her garden and looked with dulled heart. It seemed that life was over. Was there anything worth going on for? She came to realize the terrible waste of those past years. The realization was agony. She came to resent it. She was thirty-four. Soon she would be old, and never know anything but a promise of happiness.

And then again habit was too strong. All this was not true; the old Kenneth was there, waiting around the corner of the world for her. But he came and sat, with his fat, black cigars, and talked of town and the children and his golf. And it was n't the Kenneth she had known; he was dead. This was a prosperous, middle-aged, rather dull person, well satisfied with himself, a credit to his club, the perfect citizen. He had to be careful what he ate; he had a blood pressure. He discussed it as though it were a patent of respectability.

They sat and talked of the weather, a school for Alix next autumn, and whether Ken should be allowed to go in for law, as he wished. She kept her eyes and hands busy with fine sewing. She

did not suffer any more; there was just a dull pain where the agony had been. And as she saw more of him, listened to his platitudes, there was born a humor of it all. She tried to picture his bewilderment if he but knew what was going on behind her cool detachment, if he knew that she thought he had no soul, that he stood for death and stupidity and stagnation. What would he say if she told him suddenly that his life was merely a matter of digestion?

And then she wondered if she could have saved him. This, too, she came to doubt in time. His love, if it had been love even in the beginning, had been due to her actual bodily presence; there had been nothing fine or ennobling about it. She saw it clearly now.

His pride in the children suffocated her. She never saw them unless she came upon them by accident. She remembered Alix as a fat, roly-poly baby of four or five and Ken a noisy youngster a few years older. It was strange to see them so nearly grown. And, she noticed, rather amused by it, that Alix had Charlotte's round, moon-like face and the same small, selfish mouth. Ken bore no resemblance to his mother. He much resembled the Kenneth she had first known when she had married and come to live next door. He even possessed the same trick of pushing back that tumbling lock of hair which fell down his forehead at unexpected intervals.

She came upon him one day on the little beach which bound the two houses on the sound side. He was lying flat on his back in the shade of a rock, his arms folded under his head, and a book, its pages ruffling in the wind, beside him. She would have passed on; but at the sight of her he jumped to his feet and snatched the little book out of sight. Cynthia was faintly amused. stopped, and lowered her parasol. "Poetry, Ken?" she inquired, with a little smile.

She

The color came under his dark skin, and he hung his head.

She folded the little parasol and sank down on the sand.

"Let me see!" she commanded, holding out her hand.

The boy brought the book to light, suffering tortures meanwhile. Cynthia

had expected Tennyson, or at the very worst Robert Service.

"Why, it's Verlaine!" she said in some surprise.

"Yes," he replied, still more embarrassed.

She opened the little book and read half aloud to herself and half to him, "Clair de Lune":

Your soul is as a moonlit landscape fair, Peopled with maskers delicate and dim, That play on lutes and dance and have an air Of being sad in their fantastic trim.

WHEN she had done, she handed it back to him. All the amusement had gone out of her face. "I have a fuller edition," she told him. "Perhaps you would like to see it sometime."

"It's awfully good of you," the boy stammered.

"Oh, no." She rose to her feet. "Thank you, Kenneth." And she was gone, leaving the boy to stare after her wonderingly.

And that was the beginning of her friendship with him. All through the summer months they were much together. He had the soul of a poet, she discovered, this shy boy, with his tumbling dark hair and ardent blue eyes. The discovery came slowly as he yielded up to her quick sympathy his dreams and hopes, all his boyish fancies. They talked about all the dear, old lovely things things she had once believed in. Would he lose it, this love of beauty and of the things one could not touch with the hands? Would the moon come to mean a planet necessary to the solar system and nothing more? She often asked herself these questions.

"It's not law that I want really," he confided one day, stretched at her feet on the little sandy beach. They had just been reading "Gertha's Lovers," taking turns at its lovely limpid prose. "No?" She looked down at the earnest young face.

"No; I want to write."

"I think I knew it, Ken," she said gently.

He looked up at her.

"Yes, I suppose you did. You you know everything." He stopped, shyly embarrassed.

"Can you see dad?" he went on presently.

Cynthia nodded her head; yes, she could see him.

"He'll jolly well throw a fit. But I mean to do it. This law course is only a stall. It'll do to start with; it's better than any other profession for my purpose. I 've I 've thought it all out, and when I'm free-" His voice died away completely. He had forgotten she was there. He was in the future, dreaming.

KENNETH watched their growing intimacy with heavy amusement. One night she dined with them; it was her weekly custom. She refused Kenneth's escort home, saying that Ken would go, that he wanted a book he had left there earlier in the day. And the older Kenneth had flung one arm around the boy's shoulders and said laughingly:

"Do you know, Cynthia, I believe this youngster of mine is in love with you!"

And Cynthia, with one look at the boy's stricken eyes, had mastered an almost insane desire to bury her nails in the man's fat, amused face. But she turned away, and made no reply beyond: "Are you coming, Ken?"

He went with her to her own front door and did not speak a word.

Then for days she did not see him. Finally she sent for him.

"I don't think you 're treating me very well, Ken," she said lightly. That was the tone she meant to take about the whole thing.

He looked at her, but did not answer. "One must have one's little family jokes, you know. Of course I realize my age; but still I think it hardly polite-" "Oh, don't!" he said.

Cynthia stopped, startled; it had been almost a cry.

"I had no idea you were taking it so seriously," she went on. "I'm sorry". "Oh, Mrs. Waring, it is n't that!" His young face was very white. "It's that he should laugh!"

"But, dear, he thought- -" she must say something in Kenneth's favor; it would never do to widen the breach"he was only joking."

"No," he exclaimed violently. "He knows-"

She sat down beside him. She was troubled. She tried to look into his face, but he bent his head away from her.

"I'm sorry' she began again. What could she say to comfort this boy? He hardly heard her.

"And you knew-you must have known all along that it 's true-every bit of it! I-oh, I do love you!" The last two words were whispered.

Involuntarily, her hands went out to him, but she drew them back again quickly.

"How could any one help loving you!" he cried. "You-you are so wonderful! You 're like all the beautiful things I read about and--and dream. You 're like something all shining-I don't know how to say it. You're like scent and moonlight and poetry! Things seem funny to you, and you laugh when other people don't laugh. And when I look at you, and your eyes shine so, itit hurts me here." He stopped, and put one hand to his throat. "Oh, how can I tell you what I mean! You 're all the lovely things in the world"

"Dear Ken!" Cynthia's eyes filled with tears.

I

"I've been so miserable these last days! I-I thought I'd go away. tried, but but I could n't. I knew it would n't make much difference to you, you you 're so used to having people love you--" He suddenly buried his head in the pillows of the couch.

Cynthia leaned over him yearningly. She longed to comfort him, to put her arms around him. But, no, in that way one comforted a child. He was n't a child any longer.

She waited until he was quieter. "You 're wrong, Ken," she said after a little, when his shoulders had ceased heaving. "Not many people love me, and no one in that way."

He lifted his head and stared at her. "And I'm very proud, dear, that you care. You make me very happy." She took his hand and put it gently against her cheek. They sat so for a little while in silence.

What could she tell him? That her own heart had again come to life, that the whole world seemed desirable once more to her bruised consciousness? How would that help him? And then

out of the depth of her own experience came a light. If only she could make him see it!

"Love comes so seldom without disappointment," she said presently; "but if one can love and dream, make one's self content with that, almost anything is possible. Do you know what I mean, Ken?"

"I-I don't know exactly."

"I mean that love enriches one's life; I mean that love in itself is enough to make one happy-just to love and dream, to make one do one's work far better-"

99

"Yes," he said suddenly and eagerly, "I know that is true. Why, just since I've known you I 've-I 've begun-' He put one hand in his blazer pocket and searched. "I had it here," he said; "must have lost it."

"You shall show it to me some other time. What I want now is to know that you will go on; that you'll work to carry out all the brave things we 've talked about so many times. Will you, Ken?"

"I will," he answered solemnly.

"Then there's no need to be unhappy about anything," she said triumphantly. He stared at her a little and then he smiled.

"I-I believe you 're right. I am happier, much happier than I 've been in a long time."

"Why, of course," she said, and they smiled together.

He went home after a little, leaving her to wonder at the change within herself. There was a change; she knew it; a resurgence of happiness. It was as though the dead had come to life. That this boy's love had been given her when she had lost faith seemed some strange and wonderful miracle. The very pureness of it made it a gift without price.

And so she mused, sitting there in the twilight.

"MR. DUNLAP, ma'am." Honora came in softly and turned on the lights. Cynthia came to herself with a start. She had been away, a long way off, in a strange country.

"Will you tell him I 'm here, please." He came in almost jauntily, and shook the hand she held out to him.

"How are you?" he said ponderously. "I'm quite well," said Cynthia, and she noticed that he held a thin sheet of paper in his hand.

He waved it at her.

"This belongs to Ken, I think; I found it on the lawn on my way over. It seems to be poetry, although I don't know very much about such stuff." He stopped and laughed. "Seems to be dedicated to you, too. There's something in it about Helen of Troy, an unfavorable comparison I should judge."

Cynthia put out her hand quickly, but he was looking quizzically at the slim sheet, and did not see her gesture.

"Well, we all have to go through with it-puppy love." He laughed again.

It was as though he had struck her.
"Don't!" she cried sharply.

He looked at her, surprised at the sudden passion in her tone.

"I dare say you are annoyed. I'll send that boy away. He ought to be at a camp, anyway; he moons around too much, books of poetry underfoot and all such nonsense."

"Will you give that to me?"
"Certainly."

She held it in her hands for a moment, this little tribute of a boy's love. Tears welled up. She did not read it; Kenneth's summing it up had made that impossible. Then she tore it into tiny bits and dropped it into a paper basket.

Kenneth was watching her.

"That's the best place for it," he agreed, and sat down heavily.

Cynthia moved restlessly around the room. She wished he would go and leave her alone with this strange, new peace.

"I can't say I blame the boy. You know you are a beautiful woman, Cynthia."

She stopped short and looked at him intently.

"Please-not between us, Kenneth!"
"And why not, I'd like to know?”
"We 've passed all that."

"Do you think so? I 've been wondering" He looked at her standing there straight and tense before him. Cynthia had always been unapproachable in some mysterious way; never more so than now, and yet, he told himself, she had never been more desirable.

Hang it all! he wanted this woman. He believed he had always wanted her.

"As I said before, I 've been doing some thinking lately. I don't think it would be a bad idea if you and I married."

She was n't unprepared for it, and yet the exquisite irony of it caught her off her guard.

"Never!" she said violently.

"Hold on a minute; don't answer too soon. Let me finish! We 're both old enough to know what we 're about. Look at it this way-we 're growing older all the time, and we 're both lonesome. And here are the two places next door. And, then, there 's Alix. She's growing up and she needs a mother. Governesses are all right in their way, but what she really needs is a mother. What do you think, Cynthia?"

She longed to tell him what she thought. She wanted to laugh-to laugh until she was utterly exhausted. She longed to tell him that Alix had a mother-in him. She wanted to tell him that he might be getting old, and that life held no more romance for him; she was different. Not when she felt as she had a little while ago before he had come and settled himself there to make a mock of love. And then she felt very sorry for him. He had missed so much, after all. she answered him very gently.

So

"I'm sorry, Kenneth, but it can never be. I could never marry you; it is too late."

"Too late? What do you mean?"

"I have very foolish ideas about marriage, Kenneth, foolish and old fashioned. I believe two people should love each other."

He cleared his throat in evident relief.

"Oh, if that's all that 's worrying you! Why, hang it all! Cynthia, I do love you."

She smiled, and shook her head.

"You don't, Kenneth. It 's just-I don't know how to say it-it 's just because I'm here-because you think you need me."

"I tell you I do love you."

"We can't argue it. You don't love me, and—and I don't love you." "You did once," he reminded her.