ave a great many discoveries before you, Signorina Santonini!"

Deftly he circled, smiling down into her upturned face.

Maria Angelina's eyes were shining, and the smooth oval of her cheeks
had deepened from poppy pink to poppy rose. She was dancing in a dream,
a golden dream . . . incredibly, ecstatically happy. . . . She was in a
confusion of young delight in which the extravagance of his words, the
light of his glances, the thrill of the violins were inextricably
involved in gayety and glamour.

And then suddenly the dance was over, and he was returning her to her
cousins. And he was saying good-by.

"I have a table yonder--although I appear to have forsaken it," he was
explaining. "Don't forget your first American, Signorina--I'm sorry you
are going to-morrow, but perhaps I shall be seeing you in the
Adirondacks before very long."

He gave Maria Angelina a directly smiling glance whose boldness made her
shiver.

Then he turned to Mrs. Blair. "You know my uncle had a little shack
built on Old Chief Mountain--not so far from you at Wilderness. I always
like to run up there----"

"Oh, no, you won't, Barry," said Mrs. Blair, laughing incomprehensibly.
"You'll be running where the breaking waves dash high, on a stern and
rock-bound coast."

He met the sally with answering laughter a trifle forced.

"I'm flattered you think me so constant! But you underestimate the
charms of novelty. . . . If I should meet, say, a _petite brune_, done
in cotton wool and dewy with innocence----"

"You're incorrigible," vowed the lady. "I have no faith in you!"

"Not even in my incorrigibility?"

"I'll believe it when I see you again. . . . Love to Leila."

He made a mocking grimace at her.

Then he stooped to clasp Maria Angelina's hand. "_A rivederci_,
Signorina," he insisted. "Don't you believe a thing she tells you about
me. . . . I'm a poor, misunderstood young man in a world of women.
_Addio_, Signorina--_a rivederci_."

And then he was gone, so gay and brown and smiling.

Sudden anguish swept down upon Maria Angelina, like the cold mistral
upon the southlands.

He was gone. . . . Would she really see him again? . . . Would he come
to those mountains?

But why would he not? He had spoken of it, all of himself . . . he had
that place he called a shack. That was beautiful good fortune--all of a
part of the amazing fairy story of the New World. . . . And he had
looked so at her. He had made such jokes. He had pres