t she
found no words--nothing to say except in the passionate gratitude of
her grey eyes.

"You dear child," he said gently. Then, after a moment's silence, he
eased the tension with his quick smile: "Wonder-child, go and seat
yourself very carefully, and be jolly careful you don't rumple your
frock, because I want you to astonish one or two people this
evening."

Dulcie found her voice:

"I--I'm so astonished at myself that I don't seem real. I seem to be
somebody else--long ago!" She stepped close to him, opened her locket
for his inspection, holding it out to him as far as the chain
permitted. It framed a miniature of a red-haired, grey-eyed girl of
sixteen.

"Your mother, Dulcie?"

"Yes. How perfectly it fits into my locket! I carry it always in my
purse."

"It might easily be yourself, Dulcie," he said in a low voice. "You
are her living image."

"Yes. That is what astonishes me. To-night, for the first time in my
life, it occurred to me that I look like this girl picture of my
mother."

"You never thought so before?"

"Never." She stood looking down at the laughing face in the locket for
a few moments, then, lifting her eyes to his:

"I've been made over, in a day, to look like this.... You did it!"

"Nonsense! Selinda and her curling iron did it."

They laughed a little.

"No," she said, "you have made me. You began to make me all over three
months ago--oh, longer ago than that!--you began to remake me the
first time you ever spoke to me--the first time you opened your door
to me. That was nearly two years ago. And ever since I have been
slowly becoming somebody quite new--inside and outside--until
to-night, you see, I begin to look like my mother." She smiled at him,
drew a deep breath, closed the locket, dropped it on her breast.

"I mustn't keep you," she said. "I wanted to show the picture--so you
can understand what you have done for me to make me look like that."

* * * * *

When Barres returned to the studio, freshened and groomed for the
evening, he found Dulcie at the piano, playing the little song she had
sung that morning, and singing the words under her breath. But she
ceased as he came up, and swung around on the piano-stool to confront
him with the most radiant smile he had ever seen on a human face.

"What a day this has been!" she said, clasping her hands tightly. "I
simply cannot make it seem real."

He laughed:

"It isn't ended yet, eith