am
not--American. Yet what am I but that?"

He got up and walked around the room restlessly. "I am an American.
If I was not born here, can I help that? But my heart has been moulded
here. For me there is no other country. Germany I love--yes, but as
one loves a woman who has been led away--because one thinks of the
things she might have been, not of the thing she is."

He came back to her. "Will you sell me your elephant, Fraeulein?"

She held out her hand to him. Her eyes were wet. "I will lend him to
your father. Indeed, I cannot sell him."

He took her hand in a strong grasp. "I knew you were kind. If you
could only see my father."

"Bring him here some day."

"He is too old to be brought. He sticks close to his chair. But if
you would come and see him? You and perhaps the young lady who waited
on me when I came before, and who was here to-day with the young man
whose heart is singing."

"Oh, you saw that?"

"It was there for the whole world to see, was it not? A man in love
hides nothing. You will bring them then? We have flowers even in
December in our hothouses; you will like that, and you shall see my
father. I think you will love my father, Fraeulein."

After he had gone she wondered at herself. She had trusted her
precious elephant to a perfect stranger. He might be anything, a spy,
a thief, with his "Gotts in Himmel" and his "Fraeuleins"--how Jean would
laugh at her for her softheartedness!

Oh, but he wasn't a thief, he wasn't a spy. He was a poet and a
gentleman. She made very few mistakes in her estimates of the people
who came to her shop. She had made, she was sure, no mistake in
trusting Ulrich Stoelle.

Jean and Derry motoring to Chevy Chase were far away from the world of
the Toy Shop. As they whirled along the country roads the bare trees
seemed to bud and bloom for them, the sky was gold.

The lovely clubhouse as they came into it was gay with big-flowered
curtains and warm with its roaring fires.

As they crossed the room together, they attracted much attention.
There was about them a fine air of exaltation--.

"Young blood, young blood," said an old gentleman in a corner. "Gad, I
envy him. Look at her eyes--!"

But there was more than her eyes to look at. There were her cheeks,
and her crinkled copper hair under the little hat, and the flower that
she wore, and her white hands as she poured the tea.

They drank unlimited quantities of Orange Pekoe,