were full of dreams then, but I don't believe you are now. Of
course, politicians have no time or inclination for dreams."

"No; they usually have a dread of dreams. Would you rather have found
me still a dreamer?" he asked, looking down into her dark eyes, which
drooped beneath the intensity of his gaze.

Then her delicate face, misty with sweetness, turned toward him
again.

"No; dreams are for children and for old people, whose memories, like
their eyes, are for things far off. This is your time to do things,
not to dream them. And you have done things. I heard Major Braden
telling father about you at dinner--your success in law, your getting
some bill killed in the legislature, and your having been to South
America. Father says you have had a wonderful career for a young man.
I used to think when I was a little girl that when you were a grown-up
prince you would kill dragons and bring home golden fleeces."

He smiled with a sudden deep throb of pleasure. Her voice stirred him
with a sense of magic.

"This is the Braden home," she said, stopping before a big house that
seemed to be all pillars and porches. "You'll come in for a little
while, won't you?"

"I'll come in, if I may, and help you to recall some more of Maplewood
days."

A trim little maid opened the door and led the way into a long library
where in the fireplace a pine backlog, crisscrossed by sturdy forelogs
of birch and maple, awaited the touch of a match. It was given, and
the room was filled with a flaring light that made the soft lamplight
seem pale and feeble.

"This is a genuine Brumble fire," he exclaimed, as they sat down
before the ruddy glow. "It carries me back to farm life."

"How many phases of life you have seen," mused Carey. "Country,
college, city, tropical, and now this political life. Which one have
you really enjoyed the most?"

"My life in the Land of Dreams--that beautiful Isle of Everywhere," he
replied.

Her eyes grew radiant with understanding.

"You are not so very much changed since your days of dreaming," she
said, smiling. "To be sure, you have lost your freckles and you don't
kick at the ground when you walk, and--"

"And," he reminded, as she paused.

"You are no longer twice my age."

"Did Janey tell you?"

"Yes; the last summer I was at Maplewood--the summer you were
graduated. You say you don't dream any more, but it wasn't so very
long ago that you did, else how could you have written that wonderfu