h her somewhere. He had not
seen Peterson for years now.

... Sylvia emerged from behind the thin partition, sighing and smiling.
"Did it seem very long?" she asked. "It's hard to make up your mind. It's
like taking one color out of the rainbow and expecting it to look as
pretty as the whole rainbow. But I'm ready now."

"Remember, a week from Wednesday," called Madame Boucher, as Harboro and
Sylvia moved toward the door.

Harboro looked at Sylvia inquiringly.

"For the try-on," she explained. "Yes, I'll be here." She went out,
Harboro holding the door open for her.

Out on the sidewalk she almost collided with a heavy man, an American--a
gross, blond, good-natured creature who suddenly smiled with extreme
gratification. "Hello!--_Sylvia!_" he cried. He seized her by the hand and
drew her close.

Harboro stood on the door-step and looked down--and recognized Peterson.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

PART II

THE TIME OF FLAME

------------------------------------------------------------------------

CHAPTER VII

Peterson felt the dark shadow of Harboro immediately. He looked up into
the gravely inquiring face above him, and then he gave voice to a new
delight. "Hello!--HARBORO!" He dropped Sylvia's hand as if she no longer
existed. An almost indefinable change of expression occurred in his ruddy,
radiant face. It was as if his joy at seeing Sylvia had been that which we
experience in the face of a beautiful illusion; and now, seeing Harboro,
it was as if he stood in the presence of a cherished reality. He grasped
Harboro's hand and dragged him down from the step. "Old Harboro!" he
exclaimed.

"You two appear to have met before," remarked Harboro, looking with quiet
inquiry from Sylvia to Peterson, and back to Sylvia.

"Yes, in San Antonio," she explained. It had been in Eagle Pass, really,
but she did not want Harboro to know.

The smile on Peterson's face had become curiously fixed. "Yes, in San
Antonio," he echoed.

"He knew my father," added Sylvia.

"A particular friend," said Peterson. And then, the lines of mirth on his
face becoming a little less rigid and the color a little less ruddy, he
added to Sylvia: "Doesn't your father occasionally talk about his old
friend _Peterson?_"

Harboro interrupted. "At any rate, you probably don't know that she is
Mrs. Harboro now."

Peterson appeared to be living entirely within himself for the mo