the brave words were on his lips. He blinked and tottered under it, as
it passed, and then backed humbly to his divan and sat down, gasping a
little, and patting his hand on his heart. There was fright written all
over his whitened face.

"We--we forgot that I am a sick man," he said feebly, answering Celia's
look of surprised inquiry with a forced, wan smile. "I was afraid my
heart had gone wrong."

She scrutinized him for a further moment, with growing reassurance
in her air. Then, piling up the pillows and cushions behind him for
support, for all the world like a big sister again, she stepped into the
inner room, and returned with a flagon of quaint shape and a tiny glass.
She poured this latter full to the brim of a thick yellowish, aromatic
liquid, and gave it him to drink.

"This Benedictine is all I happen to have," she said. "Swallow it down.
It will do you good."

Theron obeyed her. It brought tears to his eyes; but, upon reflection,
it was grateful and warming. He did feel better almost immediately. A
great wave of comfort seemed to enfold him as he settled himself back
on the divan. For that one flashing instant he had thought that he was
dying. He drew a long grateful breath of relief, and smiled his content.

Celia had seated herself beside him, a little away. She sat with her
head against the wall, and one foot curled under her, and almost faced
him.

"I dare say we forced the pace a little," she remarked, after a pause,
looking down at the floor, with the puckers of a ruminating amusement
playing in the corners of her mouth. "It doesn't do for a man to get to
be a Greek all of a sudden. He must work along up to it gradually."

He remembered the music. "Oh, if I only knew how to tell you," he
murmured ecstatically, "what a revelation your playing has been to me!
I had never imagined anything like it. I shall think of it to my dying
day."

He began to remember as well the spirit that was in the air when the
music ended. The details of what he had felt and said rose vaguely in
his mind. Pondering them, his eye roved past Celia's white-robed figure
to the broad, open doorway beyond. The curtains behind which she had
disappeared were again parted and fastened back. A dim light was burning
within, out of sight, and its faint illumination disclosed a room filled
with white marbles, white silks, white draperies of varying sorts, which
shaped themselves, as he looked, into the canopy and trappings of an