ied a voice behind her.

Edith Carr turned and smiled.

"I thought you were on the ocean," she said.

"I only reached the dock," replied the man, "when I had a letter that
recalled me by the first limited."

"Oh! Important business?"

"The only business of any importance in all the world to me. I'm
triumphant that I came. Edith, you are the most superb woman in every
respect that I have ever seen. One glimpse is worth the whole journey."

"You like my dress?" She moved toward him and turned, lifting her arms.
"Do you know what it is intended to represent?"

"Yes, Polly Ammon told me. I knew when I heard about it how you would
look, so I started a sleuth hunt, to get the first peep. Edith, I can
become intoxicated merely with looking at you to-night."

He half-closed his eyes and smilingly stared straight at her. He was
taller than she, a lean man, with close-cropped light hair, steel-gray
eyes, a square chin and "man of the world" written all over him.

Edith Carr flushed. "I thought you realized when you went away that you
were to stop that, Hart Henderson," she cried.

"I did, but this letter of which I tell you called me back to start it
all over again."

She came a step closer. "Who wrote that letter, and what did it contain
concerning me?" she demanded.

"One of your most intimate chums wrote it. It contained the hazard that
possibly I had given up too soon. It said that in a fit of petulance you
had broken your engagement with Ammon twice this winter, and he had come
back because he knew you did not really mean it. I thought deeply there
on the dock when I read that, and my boat sailed without me. I argued
that anything so weak as an engagement twice broken and patched up again
was a mighty frail affair indeed, and likely to smash completely at any
time, so I came on the run. I said once I would not see you marry any
other man. Because I could not bear it, I planned to go into exile of
any sort to escape that. I have changed my mind. I have come back to
haunt you until the ceremony is over. Then I go, not before. I was
insane!"

The girl laughed merrily. "Not half so insane as you are now, Hart!" she
cried gaily. "You know that Philip Ammon has been devoted to me all my
life. Now I'll tell you something else, because this looks serious for
you. I love him with all my heart. Not while he lives shall he know it,
and I will laugh at him if you tell him, but the fact remains: I intend
to marry him, but