gallantly borne.

"By Jove! she's a brave one!" he murmured, under his breath. "She's a
brick. She's a soldier. She's a lady. She's the one woman in the world
to whom I could intrust my child."

Then, as his head sank in meditation, he shook himself as though to wake
up from sleep into actual day.

"I've been dreaming," he said--"I've been dreaming. I must get away. I
must go back to the office. I must get to work."

But instead of going he threw himself into one of the deep arm-chairs.
Dropping off into a reverie, he conjured up the scene which had long
been the fairest in his memory.

It was the summer. It was the country. It was a garden. In the long bed
the carnations of many colors were bending their beauty-drunken heads,
while over them a girl was stooping. She picked one here, one there, in
search of that which would suit him best. When she had found it--deep
red, with shades in the inner petals nearly black--she turned to offer
it. But when she looked at him, he saw it was--Diane.

VIII

It had apparently been decreed that Derek Pruyn was not to go to South
America that year. On more than one occasion he had been delayed on the
eve of sailing. From February the voyage was postponed to May, and from
May to September. In September it had ceased for the moment to be
urgent, while remaining a possibility. It was the February of a year
later before it became a definite necessity no longer to be put off.

In the mean while, under the beneficent processes of time, sunshine, and
Diane Eveleth's cultivation, Miss Dorothea Pruyn had become a "bud." The
small, hard, green thing had unfolded petals whose delicacy, purity, and
fragrance were a new contribution to the joy of living. Society in
general showed its appreciation, and Derek Pruyn was proud.

He was more than proud; he was grateful. The development that had
changed Dorothea from a forward little girl into a charming maiden, and
which might have been the mere consequence of growth, was to him the
evident fruit of Diane's influence. The subtle differences whereby his
own dwelling was transformed from a handsome, more or less empty, shell
into an abode of the domestic amenities sprang, in his opinion, from a
presence shedding grace. All the more strange was it, therefore, that
both presence and influence remained as remote from his own personal
grasp as music on the waves of sound or odors in the air. Of the many
impressions produced by a year of Dia