t, he was not fit, nor I either,
to stand any more sentiment just then. He said he would write and ask
you to see him, if you cared to have him speak or come back at all. That
trip West he had to take. Didn't he write?"

She saw the softly-lighted little room at home where Jack Rupert had
come to her, and Isabel's suffused, desperate face as she snatched the
letter from its owner. And as a pendant picture she saw the bleak,
solitary railway station in the gray December morning, where Gerard, ill
and reft of his splendid strength, had waited alone for the girl who did
not come.

Mr. Rose reached her as she swayed forward.

"Take me home," she gasped, clinging to him with small fierce hands. "I
never knew. Dear, take me home."

The next morning they left Val de Rosas.

It is a long journey from Andalusia to New York. But it was on the
morning they boarded the ocean liner that Mr. Rose purchased a New York
journal--and met a news item that gave him material for thought during
the rest of the trip. The item was on the sporting page, and stated that
the Cup race course was now open for practice; among the first of the
cars to commence training being the Mercury Titan, driven by Corrie
Rose--one of the cleverest young professionals in America, whose work
with the Mercury Company's special racing machine had given the greatest
satisfaction to its owner and designer, Mr. Allan Gerard.

There was no longer any cause for concealment. When Mr. Rose carried the
journal to Flavia, she told him quite simply to whom Corrie had gone in
his exile and what she knew of his life with Gerard. Of his racing she
herself had been left ignorant; she could guess whose forgiving
tenderness had spared her that anxiety.

"You are not angry with Corrie," she ventured, before her father's knit
brow and squared jaw. "You did not forbid him to race or he would not
have done so, I am sure."

"No, I did not. I didn't think I had to," was the dry response. "Angry?
He and I are past that. The days are gone when we used to have our
differences and shake hands on them. We'll get along together quietly
enough, I dare say."

"Now, I would rather you said you were angry," she grieved.

Thomas Rose thrust his hands into his pockets, looking down at the
newspaper page. He had altered during the last year in a way difficult
to characterize. It was not that he looked older or more hard, there was
no bitterness in the strong face, but he looked like a ma