up, same's you."
And she included us all in a brilliant flash of her hazel eyes.

We changed the subject after that. In self-defence we changed the
subject, for it was plain that when it came to making photo-plays we
held a very poor hand. Moreover, we saw that Miss Fraenkel did not and
could not take our ponderous interest in Mrs. Carville seriously. To
argue that she ought to was no better logic than to say that since she
was crazy about Chinese prints, she ought to be friendly with the
Chinese laundryman in Chestnut Street. We regarded the nations of Europe
as repositories of splendid traditions, magnificent even in their decay.
Miss Fraenkel regarded them as rag-baskets from which the American Eagle
was picking a heterogeneous mass of rubbish, rubbish that might
possibly, after much screening, become worthy of civic privilege.

The wisdom of our action was proved by Miss Fraenkel herself, for not
only did she make no further mention of Mrs. Carville before she rose to
go, but even when I remarked (I escorted her to her home) pointing to
the great lantern in the Metropolitan Tower, twenty miles away, shining
like a star above the horizon, "that light shines on many things that
are hidden from us," she failed to apply the sententious reflection to
her own story, merely looking at me with an appreciative smile. She had
forgotten our discussion utterly, and I was quite sure that unless we
mentioned it, she would not refer to it again.

CHAPTER V

HE COMES

It was the evening of one of the most perfect days in an Indian summer
of notable loveliness. In this refulgent weather, to quote Emerson, who
knew well what he spoke of, "it was a luxury to draw the breath of
life." Free equally from the enervating heat and insects of high summer,
and the numbing rigour of the Eastern winter, the days passed in
dignified procession, calm and temperate, roseate with the blazing
foliage of autumn, and gay with geraniums and marigolds. On our modest
pergola there still clung a few ruby-coloured grapes, though the leaves
were scattered, and in the beds about our verandah blue cornflowers and
yellow nasturtiums enamelled the untidy carpet of coarse grasses that
were trying to choke them. Not far away, down by the Episcopal Church,
men were playing tennis in flannels on the courts of yellow, hard-packed
sand. The intense blue of an Italian sky lent a factitious transparency
to the atmosphere, and the tiny irregular shadows th