el
pain and disillusionment."

"In God's green earth, what do you know of disillusionment, child?"

"I am no child, Signor."

"I don't believe that you are." He looked at her with new seriousness.

"And I am horribly afraid," he continued, "that you have an inkling into
my absurd symbols of speech."

That brought her eyes back to his and there was something indefinably
touching in their soft, deprecating shyness. . . . Barry's gaze lingered
unconsciously.

He began to wonder about her.

He had wondered about her that night at the restaurant, he
remembered--wondered and forgotten. He had been unhappy that night, with
the peculiar unhappiness of a naturally decisive man wretchedly in two
minds, and she had given him a half hour of forgetfulness.

Afterwards he had concluded that his impressions had played him false,
that no daughter of to-day could possibly be as touchingly young, as
innocently enchanting.

But she was quite real, it seemed. And she sat there upon his hearth rug
with her eyes like pools of night. . . . What in the world had happened
to her in this America to which she had come in such gay confidence?
What was she trying to hide?

What in all the sorry, stupid world had put that shadow into her look,
that hurt droop to her lips?

He could not conceive that real tragedy could so much as brush her with
the tips of its wings, but some trouble was there, some difficulty.

His pipe was out but he drew on it absently. Maria Angelina snuggled
closer and closer into her pile of cushions and went to sleep.

After she was asleep he rose and stood looking down at her, and he found
his heart queerly touched by that scratched cheek and the childish way
she tucked her hand under the other cheek as she slept.

Also he was fascinated by the length of her black lashes.

Very carefully he covered her with blankets.

Then he yawned, looked at his watch, smiled to himself and with a
blanket of his own he stretched himself upon the fur rug at her feet.

CHAPTER XI

MORNING LIGHT

Maria Angelina had no difficulty at all in recollecting where she was
when she came to herself next morning, for her dreams had been growing
sharper and sharper with reality. In those dreams she was forever
climbing down mountain sides, tripping, stumbling, down, down, forever
down, until at last there surged through her the warmth of that cabin
fire and the memory of Barry Elder's care.

She opened her eyes. The warm