Billy, no. It's not tremendous. It's only that I am quite convinced
I haven't got my money's worth. Late as it is, I want it yet. I'll have
it--if it's only playing jokes on publishers!"

They ate together in the shaded room, and Madam Fulton, looking out
through the windows at the terrace, realized, with an almost humble
gratitude, that the world itself and the simple joys of it were quite
different tasted in comradeship. She forgot Electra and the irritated
sense that her well-equipped granddaughter was wooing her to the ideals
of a higher life.

"Billy," she said again, "I'm uncommon glad you came."

Billy's heart warmed with responsive satisfaction He had expected a more
or less colorless meeting with his old love, a philosophic reference
here and there to vanished youth, a twilight atmosphere of waning days;
but here she was, living as hard as ever. And he had brightened her; he
had given her pleasure. The complacency of it reacted upon him, and he
sought about in his clever mind for another drop to fill the beaker. By
the time they had finished their coffee, he knew.

"Florrie," said he, "what if you should put on your hat and take the
train with me?"

"My stars, Billy! Run away?"

"Come up to town. We'd scare up some kind of a theatre this evening, and
in the morning you could see Gilbert and Wall."

"And 'fess? Not by a great sight! But I'd like to go, Billy. Leave out
Gilbert and Wall, make it you and me, and I'm your man."

"Come along."

"Worry Electra to death!" she proffered brightly. "I'll do it, Billy.
Here's the key of my little flat, right here on the writing-desk. I
never stayed there alone, but there's no reason why I shouldn't. You can
come round in the morning, to see if I've had a fit, and if I haven't
we'll go to breakfast. But we must take the three o'clock. She'll be
back by four."

She got her bonnet and her handbag, and when Electra did come back at
four, her grandmother had flown, leaving a note behind.

III

The next morning Electra, dressed in white and rather pale at the lips,
walked about the garden with a pretense of trimming a shrub here and
there and steadying a flower. But she was waiting for her lover. She had
expected him before. The ten o'clock would bring him, and he would come
straight to her without stopping to see his grandmother and Osmond. But
time went by, and she was nervously alert to the fact that he might not
have come. Even Electra, who talked of