ie?" he concluded with a smile.

She flushed, found no words, nodded, and sat with lowered head as
though pondering.

"What would you rather do if you could do what you want to in the
world, Dulcie?"

"I don't know."

"Think a minute."

She thought for a while.

"Live with you," she said seriously.

"Oh, Dulcie! That is no sort of ambition for a growing girl!" he
laughed; and she laughed, too, watching his every expression out of
grey eyes that were her chiefest beauty.

"You're a little too young to know what you want yet," he concluded,
still smiling. "By the time that bobbed mop of red hair grows to a
proper length, you'll know more about yourself."

"Do you like it up?" she enquired naively.

"It makes you look older."

"I want it to."

"I suppose so," he nodded, noticing the snowy neck which the new
coiffure revealed. It was becoming evident to him that Dulcie had her
own vanities--little pathetic vanities which touched him as he glanced
at the reconstructed first communion dress and the drooping hyacinth
pinned at the waist, and the cheap white slippers on a foot as
slenderly constructed as her long and narrow hands.

"Did your mother die long ago, Dulcie?"

"Yes."

"In America?"

"In Ireland."

"You look like her, I fancy--" thinking of Soane.

"I don't know."

Barres had heard Soane hold forth in his cups on one or two
occasions--nothing more than the vague garrulousness of a Celt made
more loquacious by the whiskey of one Grogan--something about his
having been a gamekeeper in his youth, and that his wife--"God rest
her!"--might have held up her head with "anny wan o' thim in th' Big
House."

Recollecting this, he idly wondered what the story might have been--a
young girl's perverse infatuation for her father's gamekeeper,
perhaps--a handsome, common, ignorant youth, reckless and irresponsible
enough to take advantage of her--probably some such story--resembling
similar histories of chauffeurs, riding-masters, grooms, and
coachmen at home.

The Prophet came noiselessly into the studio, stopped at sight of his
little mistress, twitched his tail reflectively, then leaped onto a
carved table and calmly began his ablutions.

Barres got up and wound up the Victrola. Then he kicked aside a rug or
two.

"This is to be a real party, you know," he remarked. "You don't dance,
do you?"

"Yes," she said diffidently, "a little."

"Oh! That's fine!" he exclaimed.

Dulcie got off the so