am much
more concerned to know why you are here."

Mrs. Star's eyes softened.

"Because Stephen wouldn't stop long enough in New York for me to
exchange ten words with him, and so I did the next best thing--indeed,
the only thing I could do to satisfy my affection--I came with him;
and upon my word, I do not think he wanted me! Now, how do you account
for that, Mrs. Deena?"

Her expression was so insinuating that Deena might be excused a slight
irritation in her tone as she answered:

"I don't account for it."

Here they reached the front door, for the approach was a short one,
and Mrs. Star got out laboriously and ushered her guest into the hall.

"Do you know your way to the library?" she asked. "It is on the other
side of this barn of a room, and if you will make yourself comfortable
there, I will join you in a minute. The truth is, we are not in order,
and I must give a message before I can have the conscience to sit down
and enjoy a chat."

Deena's eyes were still blinded by the midday glare, but she managed
to cross the great drawing room without stumbling over an ottoman,
and, pushing aside the heavy curtain that shut off the library, she
walked directly into Stephen's arms.

As Mrs. Star saw fit to leave her undisturbed, it would be sheer
presumption for a humble person like the writer to disregard that
compelling example. Suffice it to say that for one hour Stephen's
horses stamped and champed in the stable, and that when finally Mrs.
Star did appear, the occupants of the library were under the
impression she had been gone barely long enough to take off her wraps.

Perhaps no mortals deserve happiness, and certainly few attain it, but
if ever a man and a woman were likely to find satisfaction in each
other's companionship, it was the lovers sitting hand in hand before
Stephen's fire.

Most women of twenty-four have had some experience of love as a
passion; they have known its fullness or its blight, or more often
still, they have frittered it away in successive flirtations, but with
Deena it had come as a revelation and been consecrated to one. To be
sure, she had tried to crush and repress it, but it had persisted
because of its inherent force. And with Stephen the passion was at
once the delight and glory of his life. His was no boy's love made up
of sentiment and vanity; he had brought a man's courage to follow duty
to the borders of despair, and all the while he held the image of her
he loved