bites of the chicken with a dainty celerity, nibbling alternately, and with a kind of pretty ferocity, first at a cracker then at a cake.

"That's right," she approved between bites; "don't stop exercising. I do so hate to see men get unsightly. There's really no need of it. My husband's figure is superb, and he 's over fifty; but he exercises every morning of his life. You look awfully fit. I know enough about it to guess how you must have worked to develop yourself the way you have."

With a quick athletic pounce, he was on his knees on the floor before her. He lifted to her investigation an upper arm which, flexed, mounded into swelling biceps. "Feel that muscle!" he ordered proudly. Her slim fingers enfolded his arm for an instant. He turned it over so that the ridged triceps manifested themselves. "Feel that!" he commanded exultantly. She obeyed. The arm straightened. He unfastened his cuff, pushed up his sleeve. He thrust his forearm, the fist clenched, nearer for her examination. "How about that?" he demanded triumphantly. The forearm presented a plane of what looked like solid iron covered with satin, stretching from elbow to wrist.

Her slim fingers made experimental, but unsuccessful, attempts to dent this muscular plane.

"That's wonderful!" she approved. "How must have worked!"

you

"I wish you could have seen me when I first went to the gym," he said. "My poor little arms were like sticks, and as for my chest-well, I had just about as much chest as a sick chicken. Everybody was afraid I would get the consumption. But I began to run and swim and box, and the first thing I knew I was the healthiest kid in the place, with some punch in my arm, too. I believe in the healthy mind in the healthy body, you know," he concluded in the tone of one who had come on a great discovery.

"So do I," she said. "I hope you'll never stop working. Why, in England I have seen men of nearly seventy playing

tennis. Of course they did not look like boys, but neither did they look like old men, and with such fine, straight, slim figures still. I hate fat."

"So do I," he agreed. He took her empty cup and plate from her. "Do you feel better?" he asked politely.

"Oh, much better," she answered. "Thank you again." She arose and walked over to the window. The slim figure in its floating gray gown moved like a wraith through the air. And once quiet against. the long, dark window-glass, her draperies seemed to blend with it. The white neck and shoulders and arms, the clean-cut profile, came out like marble. He watched her with the look of one who is unaware that he is watching.

"You need n't worry about that," he said. "I'll keep my eye on the street. The moment a man appears who seems to be looking for somebody I'll beat it out and flag him. It's a hundred to one shot, though, that your signal will come over the 'phone."

"What time is it?" she asked.

"It 's after one," he said, looking at his watch.

Her face seemed to receive a fresh accession of marble pallor.

"You don't think anything could have happened to him, do you?"

"No," he answered; "but I 'll go downstairs and 'phone the police station again. And I'll call up the hospitals, too.”

"Oh, that would be so good of you!" Again that limpid luminosity flared in her

eyes.

When he returned she was examining his boxing-gloves.

"I guess you do some exercising yourself," he said, giving the long, slim figure a shrewd, appraising glance.

"I fence a little, I play tennis rather well, I swim very well, and I ride beautifully." She announced this without vanity.

"Gee! I'd like to see you fence!" he said. "I don't do any of those things except swim. You can't ride in the city, of course, and I always looked on tennis as a kind of girly-girly game."

"Some men do. Oh, but-" she turned the subject quickly-"I 'm very sure you were doing something when you brought me over here. Please go on."

A shade of embarrassment fell across the boyish frankness of his look.

"I was just burning some things up. Sure, I guess I will finish the job if you'll excuse me for a few minutes."

"Please do!" she entreated. "I'll be looking at your books."

She moved over to the book-shelf and seated herself in a little chair in front of it. He moved over to the fireplace, squatted on a cushion on the hearth. She began to pull books out from the shelves, looking with obvious interest at the titles and with obvious amusement at the illustrations. He began to feed the fire with the documents that the pillow had partly obscured.

"It's all finished now," he said after a long interval, and sighed with what was evidently relief. "Won't you come back here to the sofa? It 's ever so much more comfortable."

She She Her

She arose and swayed over to the fireplace and into the light. Her filmy, gray skirt rippled backward from the long lines of her figure, then closed swathingly in on it. The sheer gray scarf streamed like mist off her shoulders, dropped unheeded to her waist, rested on her slim wrists and on the slight salience of her hip. seated herself among the cushions. shoulders drooped a little, and her chin sank. But her big eyes, flame-filmed, looked directly at him. The light above her head played like a million-pointed silver flame in her cloudy hair. It oozed through the topazes and licked in a dozen golden flames against her white skin.

"What a pippin of a thing that is you 're wearing about your neck!" he said.

Her long, slim hand went up to the golden stones. The golden tongues curled about her fingers.

"My topazes. I'm very fond of topazes; I bought these in Rome."

"They are just the color of white wine," he commented.

"Yes, I've often thought that." She unclasped the necklace and handed it to

him. He examined it with great interest. "I think that's a corking thing," he commented, handing it back.

"What time is it now?"

"After two," he answered, looking at his watch.

"You don't believe that anything has happened to him?" she entreated.

"No, but I'll find out for sure again." With a single impulse upward, his hands not touching the floor, he was on his feet again. He bounded with his quick, light step out of the room and down the stairs. "No, he 's not been heard from at the station or at the hospital," he announced cheerfully, returning in a few minutes.

"I can't understand what 's keeping him." She looked somberly out into the whirling white heart of the storm. “If I could only get to a hotel; but I don't suppose a taxi would venture—”

He

"No." He shook his head so decisively that his thick black hair divided. tossed it into position again.

"And, besides, I have no money.' "Oh, money!" he exclaimed indignantly. "I can give you some money, of course."

"Well, then just as soon as it lets up a little-"

"I'll take you anywhere you want to go," he promised; "but there is no reason why you should n't stay here. He 's bound to find you. And there will be nobody in this house all night long."

"But I'm keeping you up," she said. "I'm enjoying it," he asserted roundly. "I'm having the time of my life."

"But to-morrow you 'll have to work," she said regretfully.

"To-morrow!" he said and started. "To-morrow- He paused abruptly. "I'm not going to work to-morrow. To-morrow I'm going-" He paused abruptly again. A strange expression came into his eyes, a strange smile played across his lips. "And to-morrow you 're going to sail somewhere, aren't you?"

"Yes, to Italy-to wonderful, appealing, endearing, romantic, colorful, beautiful, heartbreaking Italy." She lifted her long arms above her head in a sudden un

control as though she could express her feelings about Italy only in gesture. "I've lived five times in Italy, and oh, how I love it! I don't know which I love most, the ruins or the gardens. There's one garden-oh, how I wish I could take you to it this very instant! It's on the Aventine Hill. It's not such a very big garden, but such a wonder! We go in through a big, massive door, oh, so heavy and huge! and there, stretching before us, are parallel hedges of box so high that even a giant could not see over the top. And we would walk straight between those hedges and come out on a big, round pool, with a fountain in the center where ferns grow and where the sunlight, trembling on the water, is thrown up in quivers of gold on the fern. And all about everywhere are bushes cut into strange formal shapes like carved jade, and daisies with hearts of gold and petals of pink. And on one side of the pool a huge yellow cat with green eyes is playing with leaves, and on the other side a huge white one with blue eyes is nursing her kittens. And beyond the pool is the parapet, and beyond the parapet, oh, 'way, 'way off, like a monstrous, blue, bell-shaped bubble set in the sky, is the dome of St. Peter's. And below the parapet-many many feet below -lies beautiful, pearly Rome and the Tiber, like molten brass. Would you like to see that garden?" "Would I?" He laughed, but his laugh was rich with assent.

"I could take you to many other gardens quite as wonderful, most of them bigger though-gardens in Italy, gardens in France, gardens in England, and gardens all over the Orient. I've made a collection of secret gardens. One of the most beautiful is in San Francisco, a quaint, shaded little spot full of hedges and trees and bushes and lovely old mossy, lichened, vine-grown, weather-stained, broken-nosed statues, and all this running very slowly. up hill until suddenly at the top you look out on the great greeny-golden, foamlaced, palpitating Pacific. like to see that garden?"

Would you

"Would I?" he said again. "You make

it sound like things I read and pictures I saw in fairy-tale books when I was a child." He stared at her again. But now his look of perplexity was conscious. "Tell me about the ruins," he said. "You' said you did n't know which you liked best, gardens or ruins."

"I love ruins. The ruins of Italy are beautiful, but, oh, they are nothing to the ruins of Egypt. And I 've seen ruins in Ceylon and Japan and Yucatan. Imagine, in Africa, for instance, there rises straight out of the desert, all alone, nothing else about, an amphitheater bigger than the Colosseum at Rome. And everywhere these ruins are all vine-grown and flowergrown-oh, such colors and oh, such shapes! And by moonlight- You see, what makes them wonderful is that not all of them is there-dear, tender, broken things. But they suggest, oh, how they suggest! They give your mind a startingpoint, and from that it builds-oh, gorgeous shapes-the walls and towers of dreams. Can you understand that—that it's the fact that they 're broken and old. and overgrown and stained and tragic that they are so much more wonderful?"

"Yes, I understand," he said instantly. He meditated on these strange, new ideas. But "You must have traveled a lot," was the only fruit of his thought.

She was leaning forward now, her long arms partly hidden by her gray veil, like white flower-wreaths,. her long fingers loosely clasped like white lily-petals. All the firelight concentrated in her wide gray eyes and in the reflections which dripped. from her topazes.

"Yes, I've been everywhere so many times that I 've almost lost count. You see, my husband is a tramp by nature, and I'm a Gipsy. We never stay in one spot long. I've been uprooted so many times that sometimes I think I have no roots left. I hope I have n't. I never know when my husband is going to start off, but I have learned now that when railroad and steamship folders begin to pour in through the mail he 's planning another long trip. Have you ever read the life of Lady Isabel Burton?"

"No," he said regretfully. "I don't read very much," he added in shamefaced explanation.

"Well, we 're a little like Sir Richard

and Lady Isabel, my husband and I. David is a great big giant of a man, redheaded, and with a red beard, strong as a lion, and looking a little like one. What brought us together was, I think, our love of wandering. It's very amusing the way our life is conducted. Sometimes he 'll be away from me, and he 'll get an order to go off on a long journey. He 'll have to start first. Then he always writes the way Sir Richard did, 'Pay, pack, and follow!' Oh, it's such fun! I can get ready the quickest of any woman you ever saw even when I have a house on my hands. We 're such a queer pair! When we 're gipsying, he always does the cooking, for instance; he's a much better cook than I. But if anything goes wrong with his camera, type-writer, or bicycle, I always take it apart and fix it. I have a passion for machinery and an understanding of it. It 's very wonderful our life. You see, our temperaments and abilities are very different, but our tastes are the same. Always each wants to do what the other wants to do. Oh, it's such fun being together! We 're just like two children; it 's never changed any from the very beginning." There came a flash of silver fire from between her dark lashes, a flash of white fire from between her red lips: those two flashes made her smile.

The puzzled, intent look in her companion's eyes exploded in understanding.

"Why," he exclaimed, "you 're beautiful, are n't you?" And he said this with the naïveté of a child who has made an astonishing discovery in regard to the world. "I did n't realize that. I thought beautiful women had to look like that." He pointed to the posters on his walls.

She smiled with a charming, almost tender understanding.

"I

"I'm glad if you think me beautiful," she said entirely without coquetry. certainly don't look like any of them." She studied the pretty girls with amuse

ment.

"No, you don't," he agreed, "but I guess that's only because you 're more beautiful. Don't other people tell you that?"

"Not many. Sometimes a painter or a sculptor," she turned it off easily.

"Do you know," he went on, "this is the first time I ever sat in a room with a lady in a dress like that. Of course I've seen them on the stage and in pictures and in audiences. I think it's beautiful."

"I looked at your books while you were out," she glided easily away from this personal strain. "You like books with adven ture in them, don't you?"

"Sure," he answered. "The more fighting in them the better. I like detective stories, too."

"Do you like poetry?" she asked.

"I don't know," he answered. "I never read any except what was in the readingbooks in school." How do you

"Well, let's find out. like this?" She recited a poem to him.

"I think it's beautiful," he answered the instant she finished; "but perhaps it 's the way you say it and the way you look when you say it. Who wrote it?"

"An Englishman named Keats. What did you like about it?"

"That part about 'shed no tear.' "Shed no tear-oh, shed no tear!

"If I was going to write a poem about you, that's what I 'd say," he declared. "Was it written about you?"

She laughed with a note of gaiety that she had not hitherto shown. "I wish it was, but it was n't. That was written by an Irishman named Yeats."

He brightened.

"I'm Irish," he said. "At least, I was born in Boston, but my father and mother came from Ireland."

"That explains you," she said. "Did you know that the Irish are a race of geniuses? They can do everything and anything. Probably you have a genius for something that you don't know anything about. Perhaps it 's writing poetry. If you like that verse of Yeats, let me tell you about a little play he wrote called 'The Land of Heart's Desire.' I 've taken part in it so many times that I know it almost by heart." At her gesture of invitation, he seated himself on the couch beside her. She placed a pillow comfortably at her neck. Then gazing at him straight, as though watching the effect she began to recite:

"Because I bade her go and feed the calves, She took that old book down out of the thatch."

She arose abruptly and started for the window.

"He's not come yet," he said. “I 've had my eye out the window all the time." "What time is it now?"

"Four o'clock."

She made a gesture of despair.

"Oh, I am so worried!" she wailed. Then added: "But let 's not talk about that. I feel so dreadfully about keeping you up. You say you are going to have a holiday to-morrow. What are you going to do?"

His face changed; for a moment he did not speak.

"I'm going to be married," he said. finally.

"Married!" she exclaimed, and then. again, "Married!" and for the third time, "Married! Why, you child! Oh, you 're too young!"

"At twelve o'clock," he answered with a tone of finality. He moved over to the chiffonier, removed from its top a picture in a silver frame. "Here she is," he told her.

She studied the face that stared up at her from the silver circlet, and her own face changed subtly. It was a very young girl, with a superficial prettiness of curly, light hair, tiny roundnesses of feature, tiny smallnesses of figure. But there was a

"I never heard anything like that," he said finally. "I did n't know He arose and poured some coal upon the fire from the hod, but he moved as though in a dream. He seated himself again. "I've always thought poetry was foolish. I feel as though I'd been 'way off somewhereinto some strange place, or I had dreamed. I don't know how I feel.”

"It 's just the effect of beauty on your Celtic soul," she explained, smiling.

"What part did you take in it?" "Maire."

"I would have liked to see you." "Perhaps you can sometime. I'll send you a copy of the poem from London, if you'd like it."

"Oh, I would."

thing of meagerness of spirit, of insipidity of line; a something of jaw too narrow, of lips too thin, of nose too pointed; a something that, unseen at first, grew in strength until it vanquished the last suggestion of prettiness. "She 's only a child, too," she commented, handing the picture back. "And just think it 's your weddingday and hers now! When you tell her about to-night, give her my very best wishes, and tell her that I know she 's marrying a man who will always take the best of care of her."

His face changed a little as though involuntarily.

"Perhaps you won't tell her?" she questioned.

"Oh, yes, I'll tell her."

"But she won't like it?"