soul down."

Blizzard left with obvious reluctance. Two whole days without a sight of
Miss Ferris seemed a very long time to him. "I shall miss these morning
loafings."

"Is that what you call posing?"

"What else? You loaf now. Good luck to the tired eye and hand."

"Thank you," said Barbara. "Next week we'll see if we can't really get
somewhere."

"We shall try," said Blizzard. He turned at the door. "I want to play
for you some time," he said. "May I?"

"Why, yes--of course."

"At my place," he said. "I have a new piano in; it's very good. You see,
I pound four or five of them to pieces in the course of a year. I
thought perhaps you'd bring two or three or more of your friends who
like music, I know _you_ do. I'll give you supper. Your friends might
think it was a good slumming spree to come to a concert at my house. And
I particularly want to play for you. I go for weeks without playing, and
then the wish comes."

She longed to ask him how he worked the pedals, and had to bite the
question back.

He laughed, reading her mind. "If you come," he said, "I will try to
make you forget what I am--even what I look like. I should like you to
know what I might have been--what I still might be." He went out
abruptly and closed the door after him.

Barbara mused for a minute and then rang for Bubbles. "I'm going out of
town for over Sunday," she said. "What will you do?"

"Me and Harry," said he, "is going down to the sea swimming."

"Please give Harry my best wishes, Bubbles."

The great eyes held hers for a minute and were turned away. He was sharp
enough to know that through one of his idols the other had been hurt.
And he found the knowledge sorrowful and heavy.

"I'll do that," he said solemnly.

That afternoon Wilmot Allen drove Barbara down to Meadowbrook. He had
borrowed a sixty-horse-power runabout for the occasion, but displayed no
anxiety to put the machine through its higher paces. "I've had a rough
week," he said, "and my nerves are shaky. Do you mind if we take
our time?"

"No," said Barbara, "my nerves are shaky, too. And I want to talk to you
without having the words blown out of my mouth and scattered all over
Long Island."

He bowed over the steering-wheel, and said: "It's good to know that you
_want_ to talk to me. Is it to be about you, about me--or us?"

Barbara leaned luxuriously against the scientifically placed cushion,
all her muscles relaxed. "You," she said, "are to play seve