loneliness, and I know now that all the phantoms I have raised are
only colorless shadows which belie the Dream, and they are hateful to
me. I want just to recapture that old time we know of, and we two
alone. I want to know the Dream again, Pauline,--the Dream which I had
lost, had half forgotten, and have so pitifully parodied. I want to
know the Dream again, Pauline, and you alone can help me."

"Oh, if I could! if even I could now, my dear!" Pauline Romeyne left
him upon a sudden, crying this. And "So!" said Mr. Charteris.

He had been deeply shaken and very much in earnest; but he was never
the man to give for any lengthy while too slack a rein to emotion; and
so he now sat down upon the bench and lighted a cigarette and smiled.
Yet he fully recognized himself to be the most enviable of men and an
inhabitant of the most glorious world imaginable--a world wherein he
very assuredly meant to marry Pauline Romeyne say, in the ensuing
September. Yes, that would fit in well enough, although, of course, he
would have to cancel the engagement to lecture in Milwaukee. . . . How
lucky, too, it was that he had never actually committed himself with
Anne Willoughby! for while money was an excellent thing to have, how
infinitely less desirable it was to live perked up in golden sorrow
than to feed flocks upon the Grampian Hills, where Freedom from the
mountain height cried, "I go on forever, a prince can make a belted
knight, and let who will be clever. . . ."

"--and besides, you'll catch your death of cold," lamented Rudolph
Musgrave, who was now shaking Mr. Charteris' shoulder.

"Eh, what? Oh, yes, I daresay I was napping," the other mumbled. He
stood and stretched himself luxuriously. "Well, anyhow, don't be such
an unmitigated grandmother. You see, I have a bit of rather important
business to attend to. Which way is Miss Romeyne?"

"Pauline Romeyne? why, but she married old General Ashmeade, you know.
She was the gray-haired woman in purple who carried out her squalling
brat when Taylor was introducing you, if you remember. She told me,
while the General was getting the horses around, how sorry she was to
miss your address, but they live three miles out, and Mrs. Ashmeade is
simply a slave to the children. . . . Why, what in the world have you
been dreaming about?"

"Eh, what? Oh, yes, I daresay I was only napping," Mr. Charteris
observed. He was aware that within they were still playing a riotous
tw