erywhere roses.

Summer had returned triumphant to deck the favourite's path.

Randal Courteney marked it all gravely, without contempt. It was her
hour.

No word from her had reached him, but that night he would meet her face
to face. Through days and nights of troubled thought, the resolve had
grown within him. To-night it should bear fruit. He would not rest again
until he had seen her. For his peace of mind was gone. She was about to
throw herself away upon a man she did not love, and he felt that it was
laid upon him to stop the sacrifice. The burden of responsibility was
his. He had striven against this conviction, but it would not be denied.
From the days of young Eric Baron's tragedy onward, this woman had made
him as it were the star of her destiny. To repudiate the fact was
useless. She had, in her ungoverned, impulsive fashion, made him surety
for her soul.

The thought tormented him, but it held a strange attraction for him
also. If the story were true, and it was not in him to doubt it, it
touched him in a way that was wholly unusual. Popularity, adulation, had
been his portion for years. But this was different, this was personal--a
matter in which reputation, fame, had no part. In a different sphere she
also was a star, with a host of worshippers even greater than his own.
The humility of her amazed him. She had, as it were, taken her fate
between her hands and laid it as an offering at his feet.

And so, on Rosa Mundi's night, he went to the great Pavilion, mingling
with the crowd, determined when her triumph was over, to seek her out.
There would be a good many seekers, he doubted not; but he was convinced
that she would not deny him an interview.

He secured a seat in the third row, avoiding almost by instinct any more
conspicuous position. He was early, and while he waited, the thought of
young Eric Baron came to him--the boy's eager-face, the adoration of his
eyes. He remembered how on that far-off night he had realized the
hopelessness of combating his love, how he had shrugged his shoulders
and relinquished the struggle. And the battle had been his even then--a
bitter victory more disastrous than defeat.

He put the memory from him and thought of Rosemary--the child with the
morning light in her eyes, the innocence of the morning in her soul. How
tenderly she had spoken of Rosa Mundi! How sweetly she had pleaded her
cause! With what amazing intuition had she understood! Something that
was gr