turned her lovely head, curiously, not understanding. Garry
laughed, but his voice was not quite steady when he said:

"But it all depends on you, Dulcie, how splendid my mother may prove
herself."

"On _me_!"

"On your--kindness."

"My--_kindness_!"

Thessalie came up in her pretty carnation-rose cloak, esquired by the
enraptured Westmore, expressing admiration for the clothing adorning
the very obvious object of his devotion:

"All girls can't wear a thing like that cloak," he was explaining
proudly; "now it would look like the devil on you, Dulcie, with your
coppery hair and----"

"What exquisite tact!" shrugged Thessalie, already a trifle restive
under his constant attendance and unremitting admiration. "Can't you,
out of your richly redundant vocabulary, find something civil to say
to Dulcie?"

But Dulcie, still preoccupied with what Barres had said, merely gave
her an absent-minded smile and walked slowly out beside her to the
porch, where the headlights of a touring car threw two broad beams of
gold across the lawn.

It was a swift, short run through the valley northward among the
hills, and very soon the yellow lights of Northbrook summer homes
dotted the darkness ahead, and cars were speeding in from every
direction--from Ilderness, Wythem, East and South Gorloch--carrying
guests for the Gerhardts' moonlight spectacle and dance.

Apropos of the promised spectacle, Barres observed to Dulcie that
there happened to be no moon, and consequently no moonlight, but the
girl, now delightfully excited by glimpses of Hohenlinden festooned
with electricity, gaily reproached him for being literal.

"If one is happy," she said, "a word is enough to satisfy one's
imagination. If they call it a moonlight spectacle, I shall certainly
see moonlight whether it's there or not!"

"They may call it heaven, too, if they like," he said, "and I'll
believe it--if you are there."

At that she blushed furiously:

"Oh, Garry! You don't mean it, and it's silly to say it!"

"I mean it all right," he muttered, as the car swung in through the
great ornamental gates of Hohenlinden. "The trouble is that I mean so
much--and _you_ mean so much to me--that I don't know how to express
it."

The girl, her face charmingly aglow, looked straight in front of her
out of enchanted eyes, but her heart's soft violence in her breast
left her breathless and mute; and when the car stopped she scarcely
dared rest her hand on the arm whic