d?"

Peter frowned.

"We have not mentioned it," he said. Their coming to America together
had seemed most natural, but some intonation of her tone made the
implication odious. Seeing his look, she said, not giving him time to
answer,--

"You will help me with the Brotherhood. I must get in touch with it by
every possible means."

The color came into his face. He looked half ashamed, half wondering.

"I can't account for it," he returned, "but--Electra, I shan't have time
for those things any more."

"Not have time--for that!"

It was as if she accused him of lacking time to breathe.

"I can't help it," said Peter. "It's all true, Electra, as true as it
was; but I've got to paint. That's my business."

"Don't you feel that you owe anything to Markham MacLeod?"

He looked at her with interest, noting the indignation that made a
handsomer woman of her; but only for that reason, not because the
indignation stirred him. Peter hardly knew how he felt about Markham
MacLeod. He scarcely thought of him at all, save as Rose recalled him.
As to the Brotherhood, now that this great persuasive force was gone,
Peter could view it dispassionately, and it did not move him. It was
like waves heard a long way off, the waves of a sea he once had sailed,
but from which he had escaped to this upland meadow where the light was
good. Only when Rose, possessed by the remembrance of Ivan Gorof's
vision, had gone home and told him about it, had he felt the flare of
that old enthusiasm to be in the surge of the general life,--but chiefly
then because she had chanced to use the phrase "shining armor," and he
saw a knight pricking through a glade, with sunlight dappling between
leaves, and knew it would be good to paint. There was nothing to say to
Electra, because, as Rose had told him, she could listen to nothing but
the Brotherhood, and wakened only to MacLeod. It was not that she
refused other challenges; but her face grew mystical and he knew her
mind was afar from him. He got up to go.

"In Paris, then, Electra," he said awkwardly.

Her brows contracted. She remembered the other tryst that was to have
been, and could not answer.

"You will let me know where you are. I shall find you," Peter said, as
he went down the steps, "at once."

But as he walked away, he knew it would have to be some incredible
chance to bring them together. There was no room for him.

Electra sat there, her feet together, her hands in her lap, like