ed the coming of a lover whose forceful wooing
should frighten and dominate her. Never in her life had she known any
man upon whom she could not, with her trained self-reliance, set her own
metes and bounds. Surely somewhere in the world there must be the sort
of love-making that wrenches a woman out of her perfect self-composure
and bears her away on its flood tide of power and passion. Perhaps she
had been schooled and "finished" until humanity and its wonderful
reality had, for her, ceased to exist. Suddenly she felt an upflaming of
resentment against the generosity of her Napoleonic brother. In exchange
for life's golden chance of romance she had been given a wonderful
veneer of hard brilliancy--and she hated it! After a few moments of
rebellious introspection she shook her head and rose from her seat,
slipping behind the tall marble urn that rose from the end of the bench
into the enveloping shadows. She was seeking a refuge where she might
hide and hear the music softened by the distance and she kept walking,
lured on by the wildness of the surrounding hills which just now better
suited her mood than the clipped hedges.

She found a place at last from which, as one apart, she could look up at
the stars and down at the dancers.

There was a larger crowd dancing now than there had been. Evidently new
guests had arrived since dinner. She was beginning to feel the solace of
her escape from other human beings when she became conscious of a
white-clad figure approaching her, and gave a low exclamation of
annoyance. Yet something in the manner of the man's movement indicated
that he was, like herself, finding greater pleasure in solitude than in
the dance. It was only when he was almost upon her that she stood out
visible in the depth of the shadow. He halted then and bowed his
apology.

"I beg your pardon," said a voice which struck a vaguely familiar chord
of memory. "I didn't mean to intrude. I was just hunting for a spot
where I could watch things without having to talk to anyone."

Mary Burton laughed.

"You don't have to talk to me," she assured him, "because, as it
happens, that's why I'm here myself."

It was too dark for recognition of features, but there was a silvery
quality in the girl's voice which piqued the interest of the newcomer
and caused him to deviate from his avowed purpose of self-withdrawal. It
seemed to him that music sounded across a space of years--music
remembered and longed for.

"Th