d so, as he was in the habit of
doing when such a mood seized him, he went on to Peter Ferrara's house.

He walked in through a wide-open door, unannounced by aught save his
footsteps, as he was accustomed to do, and he found Dolly Ferrara and
Betty Gower laughing and chatting familiarly in the kitchen over teacups
and little cakes.

"Oh, I beg pardon," said he. "I didn't know you were entertaining."

"I don't entertain, and you know it," Dolly laughed. "Come down from
that lofty altitude and I'll give you a cup of tea."

"Mr. MacRae, being an aviator of some note," Betty put in, "probably
finds himself at home in the high altitudes."

"Do I seem to be up in the air?" MacRae inquired dryly. "I shall try to
come down behind my own lines, and not in enemy territory."

"You might have to make a forced landing," Dolly remarked.

Her great dusky eyes rested upon him with a singular quality of
speculation. MacRae wondered if those two had been talking about him,
and why.

There was an astonishing contrast between these two girls, MacRae
thought, his mind and his eyes busy upon them while his tongue uttered
idle words and his hands coped with a teacup and cakes. They were the
product of totally dissimilar environments. They were the physical
antithesis of each other,--in all but the peculiar feline grace of young
females who are healthily, exuberantly alive. Yet MacRae had a feeling
that they were sisters under their skins, wonderfully alike in their
primary emotions. Why, then, he wondered, should one be capable of
moving him to violent emotional reactions (he had got that far in his
self-admissions concerning Betty Gower), and the other move him only to
a friendly concern and latterly a certain pity?

Certainly either one would quite justify a man in seeking her for his
mate, if he found his natural instincts urging him along ways which
MacRae was beginning to perceive no normal man could escape traveling.
And if he had to tread that road, why should it not have been his desire
to tread it with Dolly Ferrara? That would have been so much simpler.
With unconscious egotism he put aside Norman Gower as a factor. If he
had to develop an unaccountable craving for some particular woman, why
couldn't it have centered upon a woman he knew as well as he knew Dolly,
whose likes and dislikes, little tricks of speech and manner, habits of
thought, all the inconsiderable traits that go to make up what we call
personality, were