e musician's playing had changed with her mood.

And Arethusa had listened, full of vague longings she did not
understand, feeling when it ended that it was ended far too soon; and
Ross had smoked silently, blowing great, blue wreaths about his head,
one after another. There had been no single word from either to break
the spell of the music.

Arethusa wrote away, the wrinkles of composition between her brows and
her writing becoming more and more ragged as the letter proceeded. Her
feet were twined in the rounds of her chair, her arms were spread out
all over the top of the big desk with a great display of elbows, and
she was ungracefully humped as to back; for when Arethusa wrote, her
whole body responded to the effort.

Close beside her lay Boris, Ross's Great Dane, a dignified animal of
unusual beauty. Ordinarily, he was so indifferent and sometimes so
disagreeable to strangers that he was rarely allowed where they were,
yet he had adopted Arethusa at sight when first introduced just after
breakfast, and he had not left her side since. Most people were
frightened nearly speechless when Boris merely opened his mouth to
yawn; but he had not frightened Arethusa. She had voted him the most
wonderful dog she had ever seen, and pleased Ross immensely by her lack
of fear.

Every now and then when she stopped in her writing to open her cramped
fingers for a moment and gaze admiringly around the room, she would
stoop and pat Boris. And she would stroke him wherever her hand
happened to fall, and he did not seem to resent it in the least, which
was something most unusual.

Ross was in the library, sprawled on the big davenport, and watching
the girl and the dog with keen delight in the picture they made. He had
never known Boris to make friends thus suddenly, in all the six years
he had owned him; even Elinor was a bit afraid of the splendid
creature.

Elinor had been in the library also most of the morning, talking to
Ross while Arethusa performed a Duty; but she had been called out to
the telephone. When she came back, her first words were for Arethusa.

"I have an invitation for you."

"For _me_!" Arethusa's pen dropped abruptly in the middle of her page
to make a large and sprawling splash of ink.

"Yes, for you. That was Mrs. Chestnut on the telephone. I had told her
you were coming to visit us, and so she called up to invite you to the
dinner-dance she is giving Friday night, if you were here."

"Oh, would