couraged."

The dress was brought out, and no more auspicious omen could have been
furnished Mrs. Halliday than the fact that, except in several
unimportant details, Sally could have put it on and worn it, just as
it was. Not only did it fit, but the intervening years had brought
back into style again the very mode in which it had been designed, so
that, had she gone to a Fifth Avenue dressmaker, she could have found
nothing more in fashion. Thus it was possible to set the wedding date
just four days off, for Saturday. That was not one moment more of time
than Mrs. Halliday needed in which to put the house in order--even
with the hearty cooperation of Don, who insisted upon doing his part,
which included the washing of all the upper windows.

Those were wonderful days for him. For one thing he discovered that
not only had there been given into his keeping the clear-seeing,
steady-nerved, level-headed woman who had filled so large a share of
his life this last year, but also another, who at first startled him
like some wood nymph leaping into his path. She was so young, so
vibrant with life, so quick with her smiles and laughter--this other.
It was the girl in her, long suppressed, because in the life she had
been leading in town there had been no playground. Her whole attention
there had been given to the subjection of the wild impulses in which
she now indulged. She laughed, she ran, she reveled in being just her
care-free, girlish self. Don watched her with a new thrill. He felt as
though she were taking him back to her early youth--as though she were
filling up for him all those years of her he had missed.

At night, about the usual time he was dining in town, Mrs. Halliday
insisted that Sally should go to bed, as she herself did, which, of
course, left Don no alternative but to go himself. There was no
possible object in his remaining up after Sally was out of sight. But
the early morning belonged to her and to him. At dawn he rose and when
he came downstairs, he found her waiting for him. Though Mrs. Halliday
protested that Sally was losing her beauty sleep she was not able to
produce any evidence to prove it. If any one could look any fresher or
more wonderful than Sally, as she stepped out of the house by his
side into the light of the newborn day, then there was no sense in it,
because, as she was then, she filled his eyes and his heart to
overflowing. She wore no hat, but except for this detail he was never