be reckoned with because the
famous people made them of such account; they were like the earth where
all creative power has life.

Electra had given carefully apportioned time to music. She knew
something of harmony, in a painstaking way; but at this moment she felt
more than ever outside the house of song. She was always having these
experiences, always finding herself face to face with artists of various
sorts, men and women who, without effort, as it seemed, could coax trees
out of the ground and make them blossom before your eyes. And sometimes
she had this breathless feeling that the incredible might happen and
she, too, might do some of these amazing things. Often, it seemed to
her, she was very near it. The turning of a key in the lock, a wind
driving through vapor, and she might be on the stage of the world, no
longer wondering but making others wonder. These were real hungers. She
wanted great acknowledged supremacies, and her own neat ways of action
had to end ingloriously.

And at the moment MacLeod came up the steps, without hesitation she went
to meet him. Any one that night might have been a messenger from the
richer world she coveted. She saw him there smiling at her in the dim
hall light, and the old feeling came back that she had known him before
and waited for him a long time. They had touched hands and he had gone
with her to the sitting-room before she realized that such silent
meetings were not the ordinary ones.

"Did Peter come with you?" she asked unnecessarily.

"No. He wanted to."

"I am glad to see you!"

MacLeod spared no time.

"You have been very kind," he said, "to my little girl."

Rose, as any sort of little girl, implied an incredible diminishing; but
the phrase served in the interest of conversational ease. Electra's eyes
were on him, absorbed and earnest. There was nothing she believed in so
much, at that moment, as the clarity of MacLeod's mind and heart. It
seemed belittling him even to withdraw into the coverts of ordinary
talk, and, if she wanted his testimony, to surprise it out of him by
stale devices. She was worshiping the truth very hard, and there was no
effort in putting her question crudely:--

"Mr. MacLeod, was your daughter married to my brother?"

He met her gaze with the assurance she had expected. It seemed noble to
her. At last, Electra reflected with a throb of pride, she was on the
heights in worthy company.

"Yes," he said, not hesitating, "she was h