but to be engaged, to be indefinitely adored by a consummate lover like
Harold Phipps, who so beautifully shared her ambition, was an exciting
and tempting proposition. Like most girls of her type, when her personal
concerns became too complex for reason, she abandoned herself to impulse.
She merely shut her eyes and allowed herself to drift toward a
destination that was not of her choosing. Like a peripatetic Sleeping
Beauty, she moved through the days in a sort of trance, waiting
liberation from her thraldom, but fearing to put her fate to the test by
laying the matter squarely and finally before her grandmother.

It was easy enough to drop out of her old round of festivities. She had
been away all summer, and new groups had formed with which she took no
trouble to ally herself. Her friends seemed inordinately young and
foolish. She wondered how she had ever endured the trivial chatter of
Kitty Mason and the school-boy antics of Pink Bailey and Johnnie
Rawlings. After declining half a dozen invitations she was left in peace,
free to devote all her time to composing her letters, to poring over
plays and books about the theater, or to sitting listless absorbed in
day-dreams.

The one old friend who refused to be disposed of was Quinby Graham. On
one pretext or another he managed to come to the house almost every day,
and he seldom left it without managing to see her. Sometimes when she was
in the most arduous throes of composition, the maid would come to her
door and say: "Mr. Quin's downstairs, and he says can you come to the
steps a minute--he's got something to show you?" Or Miss Isobel would
pause on the threshold to say: "Quinby is looking for you, Eleanor. I
think it is something about a new tire for your automobile."

And Eleanor would impatiently thrust her letter into a desk drawer and go
downstairs, where she would invariably get so interested in what Quin had
to say to her or to show her that she would forget to come up again.

Sometimes they went out to Valley Mead together for week-ends. On those
days Eleanor not only failed to write to Harold, but also failed to think
about him. The excitement of seeing what new wonders had been wrought
since the last visit, of scouring the woods for nuts and berries, of
going on all-day picnics to a neighboring hill-top, made her quite forget
her castles in the air. She descended from the clouds of art and under
Quin's tutelage learned to fry chops and bacon and cook e