me; something altogether unusual and
a trifle--well, uncanny," she finished, laughing.

Everett sat looking out under the red window-blind which was raised just
a little. As it swung back and forth in the wind it revealed the glaring
panorama of the desert--a blinding stretch of yellow, flat as the sea in
dead calm, splotched here and there with deep purple shadows; and,
beyond, the ragged blue outline of the mountains and the peaks of snow,
white as the white clouds. "I remember, when I was a child I used to be
very sensitive about it. I don't think it exactly displeased me, or that
I would have had it otherwise, but it seemed like a birthmark, or
something not to be lightly spoken of. It came into even my relations
with my mother. Ad went abroad to study when he was very young, and
mother was all broken up over it. She did her whole duty by each of
us, but it was generally understood among us that she'd have made
burnt-offerings of us all for him any day. I was a little fellow then,
and when she sat alone on the porch on summer evenings, she used
sometimes to call me to her and turn my face up in the light that
streamed out through the shutters and kiss me, and then I always knew she
was thinking of Adriance."

"Poor little chap," said Katharine, in her husky voice. "How fond people
have always been of Adriance! Tell me the latest news of him. I haven't
heard, except through the press, for a year or more. He was in Algiers
then, in the valley of the Chelif, riding horseback, and he had quite
made up his mind to adopt the Mahometan faith and become an Arab. How
many countries and faiths has he adopted, I wonder?"

"Oh, that's Adriance," chuckled Everett. "He is himself barely long
enough to write checks and be measured for his clothes. I didn't hear
from him while he was an Arab; I missed that."

"He was writing an Algerian _suite_ for the piano then; it must be in the
publisher's hands by this time. I have been too ill to answer his letter,
and have lost touch with him."

Everett drew an envelope from his pocket. "This came a month ago. Read it
at your leisure."

"Thanks. I shall keep it as a hostage. Now I want you to play for me.
Whatever you like; but if there is anything new in the world, in mercy
let me hear it."

He sat down at the piano, and Katharine sat near him, absorbed in his
remarkable physical likeness to his brother, and trying to discover in
just what it consisted. He was of a larger build tha