e hard, incessant, blinding, stupefying work which
stuns thought and makes such a life endurable.

Not that he had ever desired death as a refuge or as a solution of
despair; there was too much of the soldier in him. Besides, it is so
impossible for youth to believe in death, to learn to apply the word to
themselves. He had not learned to, and he had seen death, and watched
it; but for himself he had not learned to believe in it. When one turns
forty it is easier to credit it.

Thinking of death, impersonally, he sat watching the flames playing
above the heavy log; and as he lay there in his chair, the unlighted
pipe drooping in his hands, the telephone on the desk rang, and he rose
and unhooked the receiver.

Drina's voice sounded afar, and: "Hello, sweetheart!" he said gaily; "is
there anything I can do for your youthful highness?"

"I've been talking over the 'phone to Boots," she said. "You know,
whenever I have nothing to do I call up Boots at his office and talk to
him."

"That must please him," suggested Selwyn gravely.

"It does. Boots says you are not going to business to-day. So I thought
I'd call you up."

"Thank you," said Selwyn.

"You are welcome. What are you doing over there in Boots's house?"

"Looking at the fire, Drina, and listening to the purring of three fat
tabby-cats."

"Oh! Mother and Eileen have gone somewhere. I haven't anything to do
for an hour. Can't you come around?"

"Why, yes, if you want me."

"Yes, I do. Of course I can't have Boots, and I prefer you next. The
children are fox-hunting, and it bores me. Will you come?"

"Yes. When?"

"Now. And would you mind bringing me a box of mint-paste? Mother won't
object. Besides, I'll tell her, anyway, after I've eaten them."

"All right!" said Selwyn, laughing and hanging up the receiver.

On his way to the Gerards' he bought a box of the confection dear to
Drina. But as he dropped the packet into his overcoat-pocket, the memory
of the past rose up suddenly, halting him. He could not bear to go to
the house without some little gift for Eileen, and it was violets now as
it was in the days that could never dawn again--a great, fragrant bunch
of them, which he would leave for her after his brief play-hour with
Drina was ended.

The child was glad to see him, and expressed herself so, coming across
to the chair where he sat and leaning against him, one arm on his
shoulder.

"Do you know," she said, "that I miss you ever so mu