vened with their
relentless demands."

"What made you think of me?" An eager sincerity sounded through the
question. She was weary of compliments, but Jefferson Edwardes had a
manner of simple speech which gave worth to his utterances.

"Once upon a time," he began with a low laugh, "there lived a singularly
sickening little prig of a kid, pampered and spoiled to his selfish
marrow. Though I hate to roast a small boy, I am bound to say that this
one was pretty nearly a total loss--and he was I. He threatened to grow
into a more odious man, but Providence intervened in his behalf--with
disguised kindness. Providence threw him out by the scruff of his
arrogant neck to fight for his life or to die--which was what he needed.
He went to your mountains to scrap with microbes--and he had leisure to
discover what a microbe he was himself."

The girl's laugh was a peal of silvery music in the dark. "Were you a
microbe?" she demanded. "All these years I've thought you a fairy
prince." With a sudden gravity she added, "To one small girl, you opened
a gate of dreams, and brought her contentment--" she broke off and the
final words were almost whispered--"so long as they remained dreams."

"And now--" he took her up with grave and earnest interest--"now that
they have become realities, what of them?"

"That comes later," she reminded him. "We aren't through yet with the
little boy who won out with his fighting chance."

"When you knew him your hills had done something for him. They had
humanized him. He went as one goes to exile, full of bitterness. Your
hills were a miracle of wholesomeness. They cleansed and restored him
with the song of their high-riding winds and the whispers of their
pines. They confided to him those things that God only says to man in
His own out-of-doors. Your mountains were good to me. I became something
of a dreamer there, and in those dreams you have always stood as the
personal incarnation of those hills. That is why I have thought of you
unendingly ever since."

Mary Burton's answer was to shake her head and declare wistfully:

"I almost wish you hadn't seen me again. It would have been better if
the illusion could have lasted."

"Since then," he went on, "the little girl has grown up and been
crowned, but I shall prefer to think of her as she was before she knew
she was to wear Cinderella's slipper."

"I wonder," she murmured, "if you can."

For a time they were silent while the dance music