f delight. He absorbed ideas
and so felt that he was doing something in this city of his birth which
now, in his manhood, came back to him as something new and strange. The
weeks drifted by and he seemed to drift with them, though both mind and
body were alert. All the things he learned and all the things he meant
to do were tripled and quadrupled in interest when he passed them on to
his two counselors-in-chief, Norris, solid and appreciative, Madeline,
even more believing and more sympathizing, but glorified by that charm
of sex which gilds even trifling contact of man and maid, making her
friendship not only gilt but gold.

So he spent his days in prowling about and meeting all sorts and
conditions of men, while Ellery slaved in a dirty and noisy office; but
when Saturday came and the _Star_ went to press at three, Norris, with
the blissful knowledge that there was no Sunday edition, would meet
Percival, stocked with a week's accumulation of experiences. In the
hearts of both would be deep rejoicing as, at week-end after week-end,
they stowed themselves in Dick's motor and betook themselves lakeward,
nominally to go to the Country Club and play golf, but with the
subconsciousness for both that the lake meant Madeline.

There were, to be sure, other people, girls agreeable, pretty and
edifying, men of their own type and age, older men who did less sport
and more business, but all of these were neither more nor less than a
many-colored background to the little three-cornered intimacy which, as
Dick said, "was the real thing."

It came to be understood that the three should spend their Sunday
afternoons together, not on the cool piazza, where intrusion in its
myriad forms might come upon them, but off somewhere, either on the
bosom of the waters or on the bosom of the good green earth, who
whispers her secret of eternal vitality to every one that lays an ear
close to her heart.

The season was like the placid hour before the world wakes to its daily
comedy and tragedy; and yet, with all its superficial serenity, this
summer carried certain undercurrents of emotion that hardly rose to the
dignity of discontent, but which, nevertheless, troubled the still
waters of the soul. At first Madeline half resented the continual
presence of Norris at these sacred conclaves. He seemed so much an
outsider. Dick she had known all her life and she could talk to him with
perfect freedom, but his friend often sat silent during their