s she watched his slight, burdened figure on its slow
progress. "Poor Delia! If I was in her place I'm afraid I'd flirt with
him anyway!"

She ran down the walk to the gate and greeted him with a merrily
smiling, "Good morning."

"Only one this morning, Miss Marne," he said, smiling back at her, and
then added, as he saw her face brighten, "but it's the one you want, I
guess!"

"Yes," she gaily replied, "you're always very welcome when you bring
me a letter like this!"

She was keenly conscious of the caress in her hand as she held the
letter in close clasp. Once inside the door again, she pressed the
missive softly to her cheek as she whispered, "Dear Warren! You dear
boy! I just knew you were writing to me yesterday, and you didn't
disappoint me!"

CHAPTER III

THE MASK OF HIS COUNTENANCE

It was a curious mixture of people whom Felix Brand had bidden to the
theatre party and house-warming with which he celebrated the setting
up of his bachelor household gods in a studio apartment house. But the
varied contents of that mixture were not so much indicative of
catholic tastes in human nature as of an underlying trait of his own
character, a trait which led him to look first, in whatever he did,
for his own advantage. But whatever their differing attitudes toward
life there were few of his guests who did not follow his movements
with admiring eyes and think of him as one of Fortune's favorites.

For in this artistically decorated and luxuriously furnished apartment
there was nothing to hint that until recent years he had lived as
yoke-fellow with severest economy. The son of a school-teacher in a
Pennsylvania town, the family purse had had all that it could do to
provide for him a course in college and the training for his
profession. But at the beginning of his career he had won a rich prize
in an architectural competition, and afterwards commissions and
rewards and honors had flowed in upon him in constantly increasing
measure. While he did not yet quite merit the adjective which Isabella
Marne had applied to him, there was every promise that he would soon
be, in truth, a "famous architect."

Although he had barely entered his third decade, certain
characteristic features of his work had already won attention, and
these had been praised so much, and had begun to exercise so evident
an influence, that many looked upon him as destined to be and as,
indeed, already becoming, the leader of a new and fru