g in his best thoughts with her
face and form.

There was something of the great lover about Palgrave in his new and
changed condition. He had laid everything unconditionally at the feet
of this young thing. He had shown a certain touch of bigness, of
nobility, he of all men, when, after his outburst in the little
drawing-room that night, he had stood back to wait until Joan had grown
up. He had waited for six weeks, going through tortures of
Joan-sickness that were agonizing. He had asked her to do what she
could for him in the way of a little kindness, but had not received one
single line. He was prepared to continue to wait because he knew his
love to be so great that it must eventually catch hold of her like the
licking flame of a prairie fire. It staggered him to arrive at the
Hosacks' place and find her fooling with a smooth-faced lad. It
outraged him to be left cold, as though he were a mere member of the
house party and watch her to whom he had thrown open his soul go
joy-riding with a cursed boy. It was, in a sort of way, heresy. It
proved an almost unbelievable inability to realize the great thing that
this was. Such love as his was not an everyday affair, to be treated
lightly and carelessly. It was, on the contrary, rare and wonderful and
as such to be, at any rate, respected. That's how it seemed to him, and
by God he would see about it.

He drew up short, at last, on his strange walk across the undulating
course. The light from the Country Club streamed across his feet, and
the jangle of the Jazz band broke into his thoughts. From where he
stood, surprised to find himself in civilization, he could see the
crowd of dancers through the open windows of what resembled a huge
bungalow, at one side of which a hundred motor cars were parked. He
went nearer, drawn forward against his will. He was in no mood to watch
a summer dance of the younger set. He made his way to the wide veranda
and stood behind the rocking chairs of parents and friends. But not for
more than fifty seconds. There was Joan, with her lovely laughing face
alight with the joy of movement, held in the arms of the cursed boy.
Between two chairs he went, into and across the room in which he was a
trespasser, tapped young Oldershaw sharply on the arm, cut into the
dance, and before the boy could recover from his surprise, was out of
reach with Joan against his heart.

"Oh, well done, Gilbert," said Joan, a little breathlessly. "When Marty
did t