, although it was difficult to
believe it, it wouldn't be wise to exert the whole force of the danger
that was in him. He would let her down lightly, he told himself, and
grinned as he said it. She was right. He was only a nice boy, and that
was because he had had the inestimable luck to possess a mother who was
one in a million.

The rather pretentious but extremely civilized house that stood alone
in all its glory between the sea and the sixth hole was blazing with
lights as they returned to it. The color had gone out of the sky and
other twinkling eyes had appeared, and the breeze, now off the sea, had
a sting to it. Toad soloists were trying their voices for their evening
concert in near-by water and crickets were at work with all their
well-known enthusiasm. Bennett, with a sunburned nose, was tidying up
the veranda, and some one with a nice light touch was playing the
rhythmic jingles of Jerome Kern on the piano in the drawing-room.

Still with her hand on Harry Oldershaw's arm, Joan made her way across
the lofty hall, caught sight of Gilbert Palgrave coming eagerly to meet
her, and waved her hand.

"Oh, hello, Gilbert," she cried out. "Welcome to Easthampton," and ran
upstairs.

With a strange contraction of the heart, Palgrave watched her out of
sight. She was his dream come to life. All that he was and hoped to be
he had placed forever at her feet. Dignity, individualism, egoism,--all
had fallen before this young thing. She was water in the desert, the
north star to a man without a compass. He had seen her and come into
being.

Good God, it was wonderful and awful!

But who was that cursed boy?

III

Six weeks had dropped off the calendar since the night at Martin's
house.

Facing Grandmother Ludlow in the morning with her last handful of
courage Joan had told her that she had been called back to town. She
had left immediately after breakfast in spite of the protests and
entreaties of every one, including her grandfather, down whose wrinkled
cheeks the tears had fallen unashamed. With a high head and her best
wilful manner she had presented to them all in that old house the bluff
of easy-mindedness only to burst like a bubble as soon as the car had
turned the corner into the main road. She had gone to the little house
in New York, and with a numbed heart and a constant pain in her soul,
had packed some warm-weather clothes and, leaving her maid behind,
hidden herself away in the cottage, on