LITTLE EVE EDGARTON

BY

ELEANOR HALLOWELL ABBOTT

Author of "Molly Make Believe, " "The White Linen Nurse, " etc. 

With Illustrations by

R. M. CROSBY

 NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1914

_Published, September, 1914_

[Illustration: "Music! Flowers! Palms! Catering! Everything!"]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

"Music! Flowers! Palms! Catering! Everything!"

"I am riding, " she murmured almost inaudibly

"I would therefore respectfully suggest as a special topic ofconversation the consummate cheek of--yours truly, Paul ReymouthEdgarton!"

"Your PAPER-DOLL BOOK?" stammered Barton

"Don't delay me!" she said, "I've got to make four hundred muffins!"

Suddenly full comprehension broke upon him and he fairly blurted outhis astonishing information

"You're nice, " he said. "I like you!"

"Any time that you people want me, " suggested Edgarton's icy voice, "Iam standing here--in about the middle of the floor!"

LITTLE EVE EDGARTON

CHAPTER I

"But you live like such a fool--of course you're bored!" drawled theOlder Man, rummaging listlessly through his pockets for theever-elusive match. 

"Well, I like your nerve!" protested the Younger Man with unmistakableasperity. 

"Do you--really?" mocked the Older Man, still smiling very faintly. 

For a few minutes then both men resumed their cigars, staringblinkishly out all the while from their dark green piazza corner intothe dazzling white tennis courts that gleamed like so many slipperypine planks in the afternoon glare and heat. The month was August, theday typically handsome, typically vivid, typically caloric. 

It was the Younger Man who recovered his conversational interestfirst. "So you think I'm a fool?" he resumed at last quite abruptly. 

"Oh, no--no! Not for a minute!" denied the Older Man. "Why, my dearsir, I never even implied that you were a fool! All I said was thatyou--lived like a fool!"

Starting to be angry, the Younger Man laughed instead. "You'recertainly rather an amusing sort of chap, " he acknowledgedreluctantly. 

A gleam of real pride quickened most ingenuously in the Older Man'spale blue eyes. "Why, that's just the whole point of my argument, " hebeamed. "Now--you look interesting. But you aren't! And I--don't lookinteresting. But it seems that I am!"

"You--you've got a nerve!" reverted the Younger Man. 

Altogether serenely the Older Man began to rummage again through allhis pockets. "Thank you for your continuous compliments, " he mused. "Thank you, I say. Thank you--very much. Now for the very first time, sir, it's beginning to dawn on me just why you have honored me withso much of your company--the past three or four days. I truly believethat you like me! Eh? But up to last Monday, if I remember correctly, "he added drily, "it was that showy young Philadelphia crowd that wasabsorbing the larger part of your--valuable attention? Eh? Wasn't it?"

"What in thunder are you driving at?" snapped the Younger Man. "Whatare you trying to string me about, anyway? What's the harm if I didsay that I wished to glory I'd never come to this blasted hotel? Ofall the stupid people! Of all the stupid places! Of all thestupid--everything!"

"The mountains here are considered quite remarkable by some, "suggested the Older Man blandly. 

"Mountains?" snarled the Younger Man. "Mountains? Do you think for amoment that a fellow like me comes to a God-forsaken spot like thisfor the sake of mountains?"

A trifle noisily the Older Man jerked his chair around and, slouchingdown into his shabby gray clothes, with his hands thrust deep into hispockets, his feet shoved out before him, sat staring at his companion. Furrowed abruptly from brow to chin with myriad infinitesimal wrinklesof perplexity, his lean, droll face looked suddenly almost monkeyishin its intentness. 

"What does a fellow like you come to a place like this for?" he askedbluntly. 

"Why--tennis, " conceded the Younger Man. "A little tennis. And golf--alittle golf. And--and--"

"And--girls, " asserted the Older Man with precipitous conviction. 

Across the Younger Man's splendidly tailored shoulders a littleflicker of self-consciousness went crinkling. "Oh, of course, " hegrinned. "Oh, of course I've got a vacationist's usual partiality forpretty girls. But Great Heavens!" he began, all over again. "Of allthe stupid--!"

"But you live like such a fool--of course you're bored, " resumed theOlder Man. 

"There you are at it again!" stormed the Younger Man with tempestuousresentment. 

"Why shouldn't I be 'at it again'?" argued the Older Man mildly. "Always and forever picking out the showiest people that you canfind--and always and forever being bored to death with themeventually, but never learning anything from it--that's you! Nowwouldn't that just naturally suggest to any observing stranger thatthere was something radically idiotic about your method of life?"

"But that Miss Von Eaton looked like such a peach!" protested theYounger Man worriedly. 

"That's exactly what I say, " droned the Older Man. 

"Why, she's the handsomest girl here!" insisted the Younger Manarrogantly. 

"That's exactly what I say, " droned the Older Man. 

"And the best dresser!" boasted the Younger Man stubbornly. 

"That's exactly what I say, " droned the Older Man. 

"Why, just that pink paradise hat alone would have knocked almost anychap silly, " grinned the Younger Man a bit sheepishly. 

"Humph!" mused the Older Man still droningly. "Humph! When a chapfalls in love with a girl's hat at a summer resort, what he ought todo is to hike back to town on the first train he can catch--and gofind the milliner who made the hat!"

"Hike back to--town?" gibed the Younger Man. "Ha!" he sneered. "A chapwould have to hike back a good deal farther than 'town' these days tofind a girl that was worth hiking back for! What in thunder's thematter with all the girls?" he queried petulantly. "They get stupiderand stupider every summer! Why, the peachiest débutante you meet thewhole season can't hold your interest much beyond the stage where youonce begin to call her by her first name!"

Irritably, as he spoke, he reached out for a bright-covered magazinefrom the great pile of books and papers that sprawled on the wickertable close at his elbow. "Where in blazes do the story-book writersfind their girls?" he demanded. Noisily with his knuckles he began toknock through page after page of the magazine's big-typedadvertisements concerning the year's most popular story-book heroines. "Why--here are no end of story-book girls, " he complained, "that couldkeep a fellow guessing till his hair was nine shades of white! Look atthe corking things they say! But what earthly good are any of 'em toyou? They're not real! Why, there was a little girl in a magazinestory last month--! Why, I could have died for her! But confound it, Isay, what's the use? They're none of 'em real! Nothing but moonshine!Nothing in the world, I tell you, but just plain made-up moonshine!Absolutely improbable!"

Slowly the Older Man drew in his long, rambling legs and crossed oneknee adroitly over the other. 

"Improbable--your grandmother!" said the Older Man. "If there's--oneperson on the face of this earth who makes me sick it's the ninny whocalls a thing 'improbable' because it happens to be outside his ownspecial, puny experience of life. "

Tempestuously the Younger Man slammed down his magazine to the floor. 

"Great Heavens, man!" he demanded. "Where in thunder would a fellowlike me start out to find a story-book girl? A real girl, I mean!"

"Almost anywhere--outside yourself, " murmured the Older Man blandly. 

"Eh?" jerked the Younger Man. 

"That's what I said, " drawled the Older Man with unruffled suavity. "But what's the use?" he added a trifle more briskly. "Though yousearched a thousand years! A 'real girl'? Bah! You wouldn't know a'real girl' if you saw her!"

"I tell you I would!" snapped the Younger Man. 

"I tell you--you wouldn't!" said the Older Man. 

"Prove it!" challenged the Younger Man. 

"It's already proved!" confided the Older Man. "Ha! I know your type!"he persisted frankly. "You're the sort of fellow, at a party, whojust out of sheer fool-instinct will go trampling down every other manin sight just for the sheer fool-joy of trying to get the first dancewith the most conspicuously showy-looking, most conspicuouslyartificial-looking girl in the room--who always and invariably 'boresyou to death' before the evening is over! And while you and the restof your kind are battling together--year after year--for this specialprivilege of being 'bored to death, ' the 'real girl' that you'reasking about, the marvelous girl, the girl with the big, beautiful, unspoken thoughts in her head, the girl with the big, brave, undonedeeds in her heart, the girl that stories are made of, the girl whomyou call 'improbable'--is moping off alone in some dark, coldcorner--or sitting forlornly partnerless against the bleak wall of theballroom--or hiding shyly up in the dressing-room--waiting to bediscovered! Little Miss Still-Waters, deeper than ten thousand seas!Little Miss Gunpowder, milder than the dusk before the moon ignitesit! Little Miss Sleeping-Beauty, waiting for her Prince!"

"Oh, yes--I suppose so, " conceded the Younger Man impatiently. "Butthat Miss Von Eaton--"

"Oh, it isn't that I don't know a pretty face--or hat, when I see it, "interrupted the Older Man nonchalantly. "It's only that I don't put mytrust in 'em. " With a quick gesture, half audacious, half apologetic, he reached forward suddenly and tapped the Younger Man's coat sleeve. "Oh, I knew just as well as you, " he affirmed, "oh, I knew just aswell as you--at my first glance--that your gorgeous young Miss VonEaton was excellingly handsome. But I also knew--not later certainlythan my second glance--that she was presumably rather stupid. Youcan't be interesting, you know, my young friend, unless you dointeresting things--and handsome creatures are proverbially lazy. Humph! If Beauty is excuse enough for Being, it sure takes Plainnessthen to feel the real necessity for--Doing. 

"So, speaking of hats, if it's stimulating conversation that you'reafter, if you're looking for something unique, something significant, something really worth while--what you want to do, my young friend, isto find a girl with a hat you'd be ashamed to go out with--and stayhome with her! That's where you'll find the brains, the originality, the vivacity, the sagacity, the real ideas!"

With his first sign of genuine amusement the Younger Man tipped backhis head and laughed right up into the green-lined roof of the piazza. "Now just whom would you specially recommend for me?" he demandedmirthfully. "Among all the feminine galaxy of bores and frumps thatseem to be congregated at this particular hotel--just whom would youspecially recommend for me? The stoop-shouldered, school-marmy Botanydame with her incessant garden gloves? Or?--Or--?" His whole facebrightened suddenly with a rather extraordinary amount of humorousmalice: "Or how about that duddy-looking little Edgarton girl that Isaw you talking with this morning?" he asked delightedly. "Heavenknows she's colorless enough to suit even you--with herwinter-before-spring-before-summer-before-last clothes and her voiceso meek you'd have to hold her in your lap to hear it. And her--"

"That 'duddy-looking' little Miss Edgarton--meek?" mused the Older Manin sincere astonishment. "Meek? Why, man alive, she was born in asnow-shack on the Yukon River! She was at Pekin in the BoxerRebellion! She's roped steers in Oklahoma! She's matched herembroidery silks to all the sunrise tints on the Himalayas! Just whyin creation should she seem meek--do you suppose--to a--toa--twenty-five-dollar-a-week clerk like yourself?"

"'A twenty-five-dollar-a-week clerk like myself?'" the Younger Manfairly gasped. "Why--why--I'm the junior partner of the firm of Barton& Barton, stock-brokers! Why, we're the biggest--"

"Is that so?" quizzed the Older Man with feigned surprise. "Well--well--well! I beg your pardon. But now doesn't it all go toprove just exactly what I said in the beginning--that it doesn'tbehoove a single one of us to judge too hastily by appearances?"

As if fairly overwhelmed with embarrassment he sat staring silentlyoff into space for several seconds. Then--"Speaking of this MissEdgarton, " he resumed genially, "have you ever exactly sought herout--as it were--and actually tried to get acquainted with her?"

"No, " said Barton shortly. "Why, the girl must be thirty years old!"

"S--o?" mused the Older Man. "Just about your age?"

"I'm thirty-two, " growled the Younger Man. 

"I'm sixty-two, thank God!" acknowledged the Older Man. "And yourgorgeous Miss Von Eaton--who bores you so--all of a sudden--isabout--?"

"Twenty, " prompted the Younger Man. 

"Poor--senile--babe, " ruminated the Older Man soberly. 

"Eh?" gasped the Younger Man, edging forward in his chair. "Eh?'Senile'? Twenty?"

"Sure!" grinned the Older Man. "Twenty is nothing but the 'sere andyellow leaf' of infantile caprice! But thirty is the jocund youth ofcharacter! On land or sea the Lord Almighty never made anything asradiantly, divinely young as--thirty! Oh, but thirty's the darling agein a woman!" he added with sudden exultant positiveness. "Thirty's thebirth of individuality! Thirty's the--"

"Twenty has got quite enough individuality for me, thank you!"asserted Barton with some curtness. 

"But it hasn't!" cried the Older Man hotly. "You've just confessedthat it hasn't!" In an amazing impulse of protest he reached out andshook his freckled fist right under the Younger Man's nose. "Twenty, Itell you, hasn't got any individuality at all!" he persistedvehemently. 

"Twenty isn't anything at all except the threadbare cloak of herfather's idiosyncrasies, lined with her mother's made-over tact, trimmed with her great-aunt somebody's short-lipped smile, shrouding abrand-new frame of--God knows what!"

"Eh? What?" questioned the Younger Man uneasily. 

"When a girl is twenty, I tell you, " persisted the Older Man--"there'snot one marrying man among us--Heaven help us!--who can swear whetherher charm is Love's own permanent food or just Nature's temporarybait! At twenty, I tell you, there's not one man among us who canprove whether vivacity is temperament or just plain kiddishness;whether sweetness is real disposition or just coquetry; whethertenderness is personal discrimination or just sex; whether dumbness isstupidity or just brain hoarding its immature treasure; whether indeedcoldness is prudery or just conscious passion banking its fires! Thedear daredevil sweetheart whom you worship at eighteen will evolve, likelier than not, into a mighty sour prig at forty; and thedove-gray lass who led you to church with her prayer-book ribbonstwice every Sunday will very probably decide to go on the vaudevillestage--when her children are just in the high school; and thedull-eyed wallflower whom you dodged at all your college dances willturn out, ten chances to one, the only really wonderful woman youknow! But at thirty! Oh, ye gods, Barton! If a girl interests you atthirty you'll be utterly mad about her when she's forty--fifty--sixty!If she's merry at thirty, if she's ardent, if she's tender, it's herown established merriment, it's her own irreducible ardor, it'sher--Why, man alive! Why--why--"

"Oh, for Heaven's sake!" gasped Barton. "Whoa there! Go slow! How increation do you expect anybody to follow you?"

"Follow me? Follow me?" mused the Older Man perplexedly. Staring veryhard at Barton, he took the opportunity to swallow rather loudly onceor twice. 

"Now speaking of Miss Edgarton, " he resumed persistently, "now, speaking of this Miss Edgarton, I don't presume for an instant thatyou're looking for a wife on this trip, but are merely hankering a bitnow and then for something rather specially diverting in the line offeminine companionship?"

"Well, what of it?" conceded the Younger Man. 

"This of it, " argued the Older Man. "If you are really craving theinteresting why don't you go out and rummage around for it? Rummagearound was what I said! Yes! The real hundred-cent-to-the-dollartreasures of Life, you know, aren't apt to be found labeled as suchand lying round very loose on the smugly paved general highway! Andastonishingly good looks and astonishingly good clothes are prettynearly always equivalent to a sign saying, 'I've already beendiscovered, thank you!' But the really big sport of existence, youngman, is to strike out somewhere and discover things for yourself!"

"Is--it?" scoffed Barton. 

"It is!" asserted the Older Man. "The woman, I tell you, who fathomsheroism in the fellow that every one else thought was a knave--she'sgot something to brag about! The fellow who's shrewd enough to spyunutterable lovableness in the woman that no man yet has ever evenremotely suspected of being lovable at all--God! It's like being Adamwith the whole world virgin!"

"Oh, that may be all right in theory, " acknowledged the Younger Man, with some reluctance. "But--"

"Now, speaking of Miss Edgarton, " resumed the Older Man monotonously. 

"Oh, hang Miss Edgarton!" snapped the Younger Man. "I wouldn't be seentalking to her! She hasn't any looks! She hasn't any style! She hasn'tany--anything! Of all the hopelessly plain girls! Of all the--!"

"Now see here, my young friend, " begged the Older Man blandly. "Thefellow who goes about the world judging women by the sparkle of theireyes or the pink of their cheeks or the sheen of their hair--runs amighty big risk of being rated as just one of two things, a sensualistor a fool. "

"Are you trying to insult me?" demanded the Younger Man furiously. 

Freakishly the Older Man twisted his thin-lipped mouth and oneglowering eyebrow into a surprisingly sudden and irresistible smile. 

"Why--no, " he drawled. "Under all existing circumstances I shouldthink I was complimenting you pretty considerably by rating you onlyas a fool. "

"Eh?" jumped Barton again. 

"U-m-m, " mused the Older Man thoughtfully. "Now believe me, Barton, once and for all, there 's no such thing as a 'hopelessly plainwoman'! Every woman, I tell you, is beautiful concerning the thingthat she's most interested in! And a man's an everlasting dullard whocan't ferret out what that interest is and summon its illuminatingmiracle into an otherwise indifferent face--"

"Is that so?" sniffed Barton. 

Lazily the Older Man struggled to his feet and stretched his armstill his bones began to crack. 

"Bah! What's beauty, anyway, " he complained, "except just a questionof where Nature has concentrated her supreme forces--in outgrowingenergy, which is beauty; or ingrowing energy, which is brains! Now Ilike a little good looks as well as anybody, " he confided, stillyawning, "but when I see a woman living altogether on the outside ofher face I don't reckon too positively on there being anything veryexciting going on inside that face. So by the same token, when I see awoman who isn't squandering any centric fires at all on the contour ofher nose or the arch of her eyebrows or the flesh-tints of her cheeks, it surely does pique my curiosity to know just what wonderfulconsuming energy she is busy about. 

"A face isn't meant to be a living-room, anyway, Barton, but just apiazza where the seething, preoccupied soul can dash out now and thento bask in the breeze and refreshment of sympathy and appreciation. Surely then--it's no particular personal glory to you that your friendMiss Von Eaton's energy cavorts perpetually in the gold of her hair orthe blue of her eyes, because rain or shine, congeniality ornoncongeniality, her energy hasn't any other place to go. But I tellyou it means some compliment to a man when in a bleak, dour, work-wornpersonality like the old Botany dame's for instance he finds himselfable to lure out into occasional facial ecstasy the _amazing_ vitalitywhich has been slaving for Science alone these past fifty years. Mushrooms are what the old Botany dame is interested in, Barton. Really, Barton, I think you'd be surprised to see how extraordinarilybeautiful the old Botany dame can be about mushrooms! Gleam of thefirst faint streak of dawn, freshness of the wildest woodland dell, verve of the long day's strenuous effort, flush of sunset and triumph, zeal of the student's evening lamp, puckering, daredevil smile ofreckless experiment--"

"Say! Are you a preacher?" mocked the Younger Man sarcastically. 

"No more than any old man, " conceded the Older Man with unruffledgood-nature. 

"Old man?" repeated Barton, skeptically. In honest if reluctantadmiration for an instant, he sat appraising his companion'sextraordinary litheness and agility. "Ha!" he laughed. "It would takea good deal older head than yours to discover what that MissEdgarton's beauty is!"

"Or a good deal younger one, perhaps, " suggested the Older Manjudicially. "But--but speaking of Miss Edgarton--" he began all overagain. 

"Oh--drat Miss Edgarton!" snarled the Younger Man viciously. "You'vegot Miss Edgarton on the brain! Miss Edgarton this! Miss Edgartonthat! Miss Edgarton! Who in blazes is Miss Edgarton, anyway?"

"Miss Edgarton? Miss Edgarton?" mused the Older Man thoughtfully. "Whois she? Miss Edgarton? Why--no one special--except--just my daughter. "

Like a fly plunged all unwittingly upon a sheet of sticky paper theYounger Man's hands and feet seemed to shoot out suddenly in everydirection. 

"Good Heavens!" he gasped. "Your daughter?" he mumbled. "Yourdaughter?" Every other word or phrase in the English language seemedto be stricken suddenly from his lips. "Your--your--daughter?" hebegan all over again. "Why--I--I--didn't know your name was Edgarton!"he managed finally to articulate. 

An expression of ineffable triumph, and of triumph only, flickered inthe Older Man's face. 

"Why, that's just what I've been saying, " he reiterated amiably. "Youdon't know anything!"

Fatuously the Younger Man rose to his feet, still struggling forspeech--any old speech--a sentence, a word, a cough, anything, infact, that would make a noise. 

"Well, if little Miss Edgarton is--little Miss Edgarton, " he babbledidiotically, "who in creation--are you?"

"Who am I?" stammered the Older Man perplexedly. As if the questionreally worried him, he sagged back a trifle against the sustainingwall of the house, and stood with his hands thrust deep in his pocketsonce more. "Who am I?" he repeated blandly. Again one eyebrow lifted. Again one side of his thin-lipped mouth twitched ever so slightly tothe right. "Why, I'm just a man, Mr. Barton, " he grinned very faintly, "who travels all over the world for the sake of whatever amusement hecan get out of it. And some afternoons, of course, I get a good dealmore amusement out of it--than I do others. Eh?"

Furiously the red blood mounted into the Young Man's cheeks. "Oh, Isay, Edgarton!" he pleaded. Mirthlessly, wretchedly, a grin began tospread over his face. "Oh, I say!" he faltered. "I _am_ a fool!"

The Older Man threw back his head and started to laugh. 

[Illustration: 'I am riding, ' she murmured almost inaudibly]

At the first cackling syllable of the laugh, with appallingfatefulness Eve Edgarton herself loomed suddenly on the scene, in herold slouch hat, her gray flannel shirt, her weather-beaten khakiNorfolk and riding-breeches, looking for all the world like anextraordinarily slim, extraordinarily shabby little boy just startingout to play. Up from the top of one riding-boot the butt of a revolverprotruded slightly. 

With her heavy black eyelashes shadowing somberly down across herolive-tinted cheeks, she passed Barton as if she did not even see himand went directly to her father. 

"I am riding, " she murmured almost inaudibly. 

"In this heat?" groaned her father. 

"In this heat, " echoed Eve Edgarton. 

"There will surely be a thunder-storm, " protested her father. 

"There will surely be a thunder-storm, " acquiesced Eve Edgarton. 

Without further parleying she turned and strolled off again. 

Just for an instant the Older Man's glance followed her. Just for aninstant with quizzically twisted eyebrows his glance flashed backsardonically to Barton's suffering face. Then very leisurely he beganto laugh again. 

But right in the middle of the laugh--as if something infinitelyfunnier than a joke had smitten him suddenly--he stopped short, withone eyebrow stranded half-way up his forehead. 

"Eve!" he called sharply. "Eve! Come back here a minute!"

Very laggingly from around the piazza corner the girl reappeared. 

"Eve, " said her father quite abruptly, "this is Mr. Barton! Mr. Barton, this is my daughter!"

Listlessly the girl came forward and proffered her hand to the YoungerMan. It was a very little hand. More than that, it was an exceedinglycold little hand. 

"How do you do, sir?" she murmured almost inaudibly. 

With an expression of ineffable joy the Older Man reached out andtapped his daughter on the shoulder. 

"It has just transpired, my dear Eve, " he beamed, "that you can dothis young man here an inestimable service--tell him something--teachhim something, I mean--that he very specially needs to know!"

As one fairly teeming with benevolence he stood there smiling blandlyinto Barton's astonished face. "Next to the pleasure of bringingtogether two people who like each other, " he persisted, "I know ofnothing more poignantly diverting than the bringing together of peoplewho--who--" Mockingly across his daughter's unconscious head, malevolently through his mask of utter guilelessness and peace, hechallenged Barton's staring helplessness. "So--taken all in all, " hedrawled still beamingly, "there's nothing in the world--at thisparticular moment, Mr. Barton--that could amuse me more than to haveyou join my daughter in her ride this afternoon!"

"Ride with me?" gasped little Eve Edgarton. 

"This afternoon?" floundered Barton. 

"Oh--why--yes--of course! I'd be delighted! I'd be--be! Only--! OnlyI'm afraid that--!"

Deprecatingly with uplifted hand the Older Man refuted everyprotest. "No, indeed, Mr. Barton, " he insisted. "Oh, no--no indeed--Iassure you it won't inconvenience my daughter in the slightest! Mydaughter is very obliging! My daughter, indeed--if I may say soin all modesty--my daughter indeed is always a good deal ofa--philanthropist!"

Then very grandiloquently, like a man in an old-fashioned picture, hebegan to back away from them, bowing low all the time, very, very low, first to Barton, then to his daughter, then to Barton again. 

"I wish you both a very good afternoon!" he said. "Really, I see noreason why either of you should expect a single dull moment!"

[Illustration: "I would therefore respectfully suggest as a specialtopic of conversation the consummate cheek of--yours truly, PaulReymouth Edgarton"]

Before the sickly grin on Barton's face his own smile deepened intoactual unctuousness. But before the sudden woodeny set of hisdaughter's placid mouth his unctuousness twisted just a little bitwryly on his lips. 

"After all, my dear young people, " he asserted hurriedly, "there'sjust one thing in the world, you know, that makes two peoplecongenial, and that is--that they both shall have arrived at exactlythe same conclusion--by two totally different routes. It's got to beexactly the same conclusion, else there isn't any sympathy in it. Butit's got to be by two totally different routes, you understand, elsethere isn't any talky-talk to it!"

Laboriously one eyebrow began to jerk its way up his forehead, andwith a purely mechanical instinct he reached up drolly and pulled itdown again. "So--as the initial test of your mutual congeniality thisafternoon, " he resumed, "I would therefore respectfully suggest as aspecial topic of conversation the consummate cheek of--yours truly, Paul Reymouth Edgarton!"

Starting to bow once more, he backed instead into the screen of theoffice window. Without even an expletive he turned, pushed in thescreen, clambered adroitly through the aperture, and disappearedalmost instantly from sight. 

Very faintly from some far up-stairs region the thin, faint, singlesyllable of a laugh came floating down into the piazza corner. 

Then just as precipitous as a man steps into any other hole, Bartonstepped into the conversational topic that had just been so aptlyprovided for him. 

"Is your father something of a--of a practical joker, Miss Edgarton?"he demanded with the slightest possible tinge of shrillness. 

For the first time in Barton's knowledge of little Eve Edgarton shelifted her eyes to him--great hazel eyes, great bored, dreary, hazeleyes set broadly in a too narrow olive face. 

"My father is generally conceded to be something of a joker, Ibelieve, " she said dully. "But it would never have occurred to me tocall him a particularly practical one. I don't like him, " she addedwithout a flicker of expression. 

"I don't either!" snapped Barton. 

A trifle uneasily little Eve Edgarton went on. "Why--once when I was atiny child--" she droned. 

"I don't know anything about when you were a tiny child, " affirmedBarton with some vehemence. "But just this afternoon--!"

In striking contrast to the cool placidity of her face one of EveEdgarton's boot-toes began to tap-tap-tap against the piazza floor. When she lifted her eyes again to Barton their sleepy sullenness wasshot through suddenly with an unmistakable flash of temper. 

"Oh, for Heaven's sake, Mr. Barton!" she cried out. "If you insistupon riding with me, couldn't you please hurry? The afternoons are soshort!"

"If I 'insist' upon riding with you?" gasped Barton. 

Disconcertingly from an upper window the Older Man's face beamedsuddenly down upon him. "Oh, don't mind anything she says, " drawledthe Older Man. "It's just her cunning, 'meek' little ways. "

Precipitately Barton bolted for his room. 

Once safely ensconced behind his closed door a dozen differentdecisions, a dozen different indecisions, rioted tempestuously throughhis mind. To go was just as awkward as not to go! Not to go was justas awkward as to go! Over and over and over one silly alternativechased the other through his addled senses. Then just as precipitatelyas he had bolted to his room he began suddenly to hurl himself intohis riding-clothes, yanking out a bureau drawer here, slamming back acloset door there, rummaging through a box, tipping over a trunk, yetin all his fuming haste, his raging irritability, showing the samefastidious choice of shirt, tie, collar, that characterized his everypublic appearance. 

Immaculate at last as a tailor's equestrian advertisement he camestriding down again into the hotel office, only to plunge mostinopportunely into Miss Von Eaton's languorous presence. 

"Why, Jim!" gasped Miss Von Eaton. Exquisitely white and cool andfluffy and dainty, she glanced up perplexedly at him from her lazy, deep-seated chair. "Why, Jim!" she repeated, just a little bit edgily. "Riding? Riding? Well, of all things! You who wouldn't even playbridge with us this afternoon on account of the heat! Well, who in theworld--who can it be that has cut us all out?"

Teasingly she jumped up and walked to the door with him, and stoodthere peering out beyond the cool shadow of his dark-blue shoulderinto the dazzling road where, like so many figures thrust forth allunwittingly into the merciless flare of a spot-light, little shabbyEve Edgarton and three sweating horses waited squintingly in the dust. 

"Oh!" cried Miss Von Eaton. "W-hy!" stammered Miss Von Eaton. "Goodgracious!" giggled Miss Von Eaton. Then hysterically, with her handclapped over her mouth, she turned and fled up the stairs to confidethe absurd news to her mates. 

With a face like a graven image Barton went on down the steps into theroad. In one of his thirty-dollar riding-boots a disconcertingtwo-cent sort of squeak merely intensified his unhappy sensation ofbeing motivated purely mechanically like a doll. 

Two of the horses that whinnied cordially at his approach were rustyroans. The third was a chunky gray. Already on one of the roans EveEdgarton sat perched with her bridle-rein oddly slashed in two, andknotted, each raw end to a stirrup, leaving her hands and arms stillperfectly free to hug her mysterious books and papers to her breast. 

"Good afternoon again, Miss Edgarton, " smiled Barton conscientiously. 

"Good afternoon again, Mr. Barton, " echoed Eve Edgarton listlessly. 

With frank curiosity he nodded toward her armful of papers. "Surelyyou're not going to carry--all that stuff with you?" he questioned. 

"Yes, I am, Mr. Barton, " drawled Eve Edgarton, scarcely above awhisper. 

Worriedly he pointed to her stirrups. "But Great Scott, MissEdgarton!" he protested. "Surely you're not reckless enough to ridelike that? Just guiding with your feet?"

"I always--do, Mr. Barton, " singsonged the girl monotonously. 

"But the extra horse?" cried Barton. With a sudden little chuckle ofrelief he pointed to the chunky gray. There was a side-saddle on thechunky gray. "Who's going with us?"

Almost insolently little Eve Edgarton narrowed her sleepy eyes. 

"I always taken an extra horse with me, Mr. Barton--Thank you!" sheyawned, with the very faintest possible tinge of asperity. 

"Oh!" stammered Barton quite helplessly. "O--h!" Heavily, as he spoke, he lifted one foot to his stirrup and swung up into his saddle. Through all his mental misery, through all his physical discomfort, asingle lovely thought sustained him. There was only one really goodriding road in that vicinity! And it was shady! And, thank Heaven, itwas most inordinately short!

But Eve Edgarton falsified the thought before he was half throughthinking it. 

She swung her horse around, reared him to almost a perpendicularheight, merged herself like so much fluid khaki into his great, towering, threatening neck, reacted almost instantly to her ownbalance again, and went plunging off toward the wild, rough, untraveled foot-hills and--certain destruction, any unbiased onlookerwould have been free to affirm!

Snortingly the chunky gray went tearing after her. A trifle sulkilyBarton's roan took up the chase. 

Shade? Oh, ye gods! If Eve Edgarton knew shade when she saw it shecertainly gave no possible sign of such intelligence. Wherever thegalloping, grass-grown road hesitated between green-roofed forest anddevastated wood-lot, she chose the devastated wood-lot! Wherever thetrotting, treacherous pasture faltered between hobbly, rock-strewnglare and soft, lush-carpeted spots of shade, she chose the hobbly, rock-strewn glare! On and on and on! Till dust turned sweat! And sweatturned dust again! On and on and on! With the riderless gray thuddingmadly after her! And Barton's sulky roan balking frenziedly at eachnew swerve and turn!

It must have been almost three miles before Barton quite overtook her. Then in the scudding, transitory shadow of a growly thunder-cloud shereined in suddenly, waited patiently till Barton's panting horse wasnose and nose with hers, and then, pushing her slouch hat back fromher low, curl-fringed forehead, jogged listlessly along beside himwith her pale olive face turned inquiringly to his drenched, beet-colored visage. 

"What was it that you wanted me to do for you, Mr. Barton?" she askedwith a laborious sort of courtesy. "Are you writing a book orsomething that you wanted me to help you about? Is that it? Is thatwhat Father meant?"

"Am I writing a--book?" gasped Barton. Desperately he began to mop hisforehead. "Writing a book? Am--I--writing--a--book? Heaven forbid!"

"What are you doing?" persisted the girl bluntly. 

"What am I doing?" repeated Barton. "Why, riding with you! Trying toride with you!" he called out grimly as, taking the lead impetuouslyagain, Eve Edgarton's horse shied off at a rabbit and went sidlingdown a sand-bank into a brand-new area of rocks and stubble andbreast-high blueberry bushes. 

Barton liked to ride and he rode fairly well, but he was by no meansan equestrian acrobat, and, quite apart from the girl's unquestionablydisconcerting mannerisms, the foolish floppity presence of theriderless gray rattled him more than he could possibly account for. Yet to save his life he could not have told which would seem morechildish--to turn back in temper, or to follow on--in the same. 

More in helplessness than anything else he decided to follow on. 

"On and on and on, " would have described it more adequately. 

Blacker and blacker the huddling thunder-caps spotted across thebrilliant, sunny sky. Gaspier and gaspier in each lulling tree-top, ineach hushing bird-song, in each drooping grass-blade, the whole torridearth seemed to be sucking in its breath as if it meant never, neverto exhale it again. 

Once more in the midst of a particularly hideous glare the girl tookoccasion to rein in and wait for him, turning once more to hisflushed, miserable countenance a little face inordinately pale andserene. 

"If you're not writing a book, what would you like to talk about, Mr. Barton?" she asked conscientiously. "Would you like to talk aboutpeat-bog fossils?"

"What?" gasped Barton. 

"Peat-bog fossils, " repeated the mild little voice. "Are youinterested in peat-bog fossils? Or would you rather talk about theMississippi River pearl fisheries? Or do you care more perhaps forpolitics? Would you like to discuss the relative financial conditionsof the South American republics?"

Before the expression of blank despair in Barton's face, her own facefell a trifle. "No?" she ventured worriedly. "No? Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Barton, but you see--you see--I've never been out before withanybody--my own age. So I don't know at all what you would beinterested in!"

"Never been out before with any one her own age?" gasped Barton tohimself. Merciful Heavens! what was her "own age"? There in her littlekhaki Norfolk and old slouch hat she looked about fifteen yearsold--and a boy, at that. Altogether wretchedly he turned and grinnedat her. 

"Miss Edgarton, " he said, "believe me, there's not one thing to-dayunder God's heaven that does interest me--except the weather!"

"The weather?" mused little Eve Edgarton thoughtfully. Casually, asshe spoke, she glanced down across the horses' lathered sides and upinto Barton's crimson face. "The weather? Oh!" she hastened anxiouslyto affirm. "Oh, yes! The meteorological conditions certainly areinteresting this summer. Do you yourself think that it's a shifting ofthe Gulf Stream? Or just a--just a change in the paths of the cyclonicareas of low pressure?" she persisted drearily. 

"Eh?" gasped Barton. "The weather? Heat was what I meant, MissEdgarton! Just plain heat!--DAMNED HEAT--was what I meant--if I may beso explicit, Miss Edgarton. "

"It is hot, " conceded Eve apologetically. 

"In fact, " snapped Barton, "I think it's the hottest day I ever knew!"

"Really?" droned Eve Edgarton. 

"Really!" snapped Barton. 

It must have been almost half an hour before anybody spoke again. Then, "Pretty hot, isn't it?" Barton began all over again. 

"Yes, " said Eve Edgarton. 

"In fact, " hissed Barton through clenched teeth, "in fact I know it'sthe hottest day I ever knew!"

"Really?" droned Eve Edgarton. 

"Really!" choked Barton. 

Creakily under their hot, chafing saddles the sweltering roans lurchedoff suddenly through a great snarl of bushes into a fern-shadedspring-hole and stood ankle-deep in the boggy grass, guzzling noisilyat food and drink, with the chunky gray crowding greedily againstfirst one rider and then the other. 

Quite against all intention Barton groaned aloud. His sun-scorchedeyes seemed fairly shriveling with the glare. His wilted linen collarslopped like a stale poultice around his tortured neck. In his stickyfingers the bridle-rein itched like so much poisoned ribbon. 

Reaching up one small hand to drag the soft flannel collar of hershirt a little farther down from her slim throat, Eve Edgarton restedher chin on her knuckles for an instant and surveyed him plaintively. "Aren't--we--having--an--awful time?" she whispered. 

Even then if she had looked woman-y, girl-y, even remotely, affectedlyfeminine, Barton would doubtless have floundered heroically throughsome protesting lie. But to the frank, blunt, little-boyishness of herhe succumbed suddenly with a beatific grin of relief. "Yes, wecertainly are!" he acknowledged ruthlessly. 

"And what good is it?" questioned the girl most unexpectedly. 

"Not any good!" grunted Barton. 

"To any one?" persisted the girl. 

"Not to any one!" exploded Barton. 

With an odd little gasp of joy the girl reached out dartingly andtouched Barton on his sleeve. Her face was suddenly eager, active, transcendently vital. 

"Then oh--won't you please--please--turn round--and go home--and leaveme alone?" she pleaded astonishingly. 

"Turn round and go home?" stammered Barton. 

The touch on his sleeve quickened a little. "Oh, yes--please, Mr. Barton!" insisted the tremulous voice. 

"You--you mean I'm in your way?" stammered Barton. 

Very gravely the girl nodded her head. "Oh, yes, Mr. Barton--you'reterribly in my way, " she acknowledged quite frankly. 

"Good Heavens, " thought Barton, "is there a man in this? Is it atryst? Well, of all things!"

Jerkily he began to back his horse out of the spring-hole, back--back--back through the intricate, overgrown pathway of flappingleaves and sharp, scratchy twigs. 

"I am very sorry, Miss Edgarton, to have forced my presence on youso!" he murmured ironically. 

"Oh, it isn't just you!" said little Eve Edgarton quite frankly. "It'sall Father's friends. " Almost threateningly as she spoke she jerked upher own horse's drizzling mouth and rode right at Barton as if toforce him back even faster through the great snarl of underbrush. "Ihate clever people!" she asserted passionately. "I hate them--hatethem--hate them! I hate all Father's clever friends! I hate--"

"But you see I'm not clever, " grinned Barton in spite of himself. "Oh, not clever at all, " he reiterated with some grimness as an alderbranch slapped him stingingly across one eye. "Indeed--" he dodged andducked and floundered, still backing, backing, everlastinglybacking--"indeed, your father has spent quite a lot of his valuabletime this afternoon assuring me--and reassuring me--that--that I'maltogether a fool!"

Unrelentingly little Eve Edgarton's horse kept right on forcing himback--back--back. 

"But if you're not one of Father's clever friends--who are you?" shedemanded perplexedly. "And why did you insist so on riding with methis afternoon?" she cried accusingly. 

"I didn't exactly--insist, " grinned Barton with a flush of guilt. Theflush of guilt added to the flush of heat made him look suddenly veryconfused. 

Across Eve Edgarton's thin little face the flash of temper fadedinstantly into mere sulky ennui again. 

"Oh, dear--oh, dear, " she droned. "You--you didn't want to marry me, did you?"

Just for one mad, panic-stricken second the whole world seemed to turnblack before Barton's eyes. His heart stopped beating. His ear-drumscracked. Then suddenly, astonishingly, he found himself grinning intothat honest little face, and answering comfortably:

"Why, no, Miss Edgarton, I hadn't the slightest idea in the world ofwanting to marry you. "

"Thank God for that!" gasped little Eve Edgarton. "So many of Father'sfriends do want to marry me, " she confided plaintively, still drivingBarton back through that horrid scratchy thicket. "I'm so rich, yousee, " she confided with equal simplicity, "and I know somuch--there's almost always somebody in Petrozavodsk or Broken Hillor Bashukulumbwe who wants to marry me. "

"In--where?" stammered Barton. 

"Why--in Russia!" said little Eve Edgarton with some surprise. "AndAustralia! And Africa! Were you never there?"

"I've been in Jersey City, " babbled Barton with a desperate attempt atfacetiousness. 

"I was never there!" admitted little Eve Edgarton regretfully. 

Vehemently with one hand she lunged forward and tried with her tinyopen palm to push Barton's horse a trifle faster back through theintricate thicket. Then once in the open again she drew herself upwith an absurd air of dignity and finality and bowed him from herpresence. 

"Good-by, Mr. Barton, " she said. "Good-by, Mr. Barton. "

"But Miss Edgarton--" stammered Barton perplexedly. Whatever his ownpersonal joy and relief might be, the surrounding countrynevertheless was exceedingly wild, and the girl an extravagantly longdistance from home. "But Miss Edgarton--" he began all over again. 

"Good-by, Mr. Barton! And thank you for going home!" she addedconscientiously. 

"But what will I tell your father?" worried Barton. 

"Oh--hang Father, " drawled the indifferent little voice. 

"But the extra horse?" argued Barton with increasing perplexity. "Thegray? If you've got some date up your sleeve, don't you want me totake the gray home with me, and get him out of your way?"

With sluggish resentment little Eve Edgarton lifted her eyes to his. "What would the gray go home with you for?" she asked tersely. "Why, how silly! Why, it's my--mother's horse! That is, we call it mymother's horse, " she hastened to explain. "My mother's dead, you know. She's almost always been dead, I mean. So Father always makes me buyan extra place for my mother. It's just a trick of ours, a sort of acustom. I play around alone so much you know. And we live in such wildplaces!"

Casually she bent over and pushed the protruding butt of her revolvera trifle farther down into her riding boot. "S'long--Mr. Barton!" shecalled listlessly over the other, and started on, stumblingly, clatteringly, up the abruptly steep and precipitous mountain trail--alittle dust-colored gnome on a dust-colored horse, with the dutifulgray pinking cautiously along behind her. 

By some odd twist of his bridle-rein the gray's chunky neck archedslightly askew, and he pranced now and then from side to side of thetrail as if guided thus by an invisible hand. 

With an uncanny pucker along his spine as if he found himself suddenlydeserting two women instead of one, Barton went fumbling and squintingout through the dusty green shade into the expected glare of the openpasture, and discovered, to his further disconcerting, that there wasno glare left. 

Before his astonished eyes he saw sun-scorched mountain-top, sun-scorched granite, sun-scorched field stubble turned suddenly toshade--no cool, translucent miracle of fluctuant greens, but a horrid, plushy, purple dusk under a horrid, plushy, purple sky, with a rip oflightning along the horizon, a galloping gasp of furiously oncomingwind, an almost strangling stench of dust-scented rain. 

But before he could whirl his horse about, the storm broke! Heavenfell! Hell rose! The sides of the earth caved in! Chaos unspeakabletore north, east, south, west!

Snortingly for one single instant the roan's panic-stricken nostrilswent blooming up into the cloud-burst like two parched scarletpoinsettias. Then man and beast as one flesh, as one mind, wentbolting back through the rain-drenched, wind-ravished thicket to findtheir mates. 

Up, up, up, everlastingly up, the mountain trail twisted and scrambledthrough the unholy darkness. Now and again a slippery stone trippedthe roan's fumbling feet. Now and again a swaying branch slappedBarton stingingly across his straining eyes. All around and about themtortured forest trees moaned and writhed in the gale. Through everycavernous vista gray sheets of rain went flapping madly by them. Thelightning was incredible. The thunder like the snarl of a glass skyshivering into inestimable fragments. 

With every gasping breath beginning to rip from his poor lungs like aknifed stitch, the roan still faltered on each new ledge to whinnydesperately to his mate. Equally futilely from time to time, Barton, with his hands cupped to his mouth, holloed--holloed--holloed--intothe thunderous darkness. 

Then at a sharp turn in the trail, magically, in a pale, transientflicker of light, loomed little Eve Edgarton's boyish figure, drenchedto the skin apparently, wind-driven, rain-battered, but with hands inher pockets, slouch hat rakishly askew, strolling as nonchalantly downthat ghastly trail as a child might come strolling down astained-glassed, Persian-carpeted stairway to meet an expected guest. 

In vaguely silhouetted greeting for one fleet instant a little khakiarm lifted itself full length into the air. 

Then more precipitately than any rational thing could happen, moreprecipitately than any rational thing could even begin to happen, could even begin to begin to happen, without shock, without noise, without pain, without terror or turmoil, or any time at all to fightor pray--a slice of living flame came scaling through thedarkness--and cut Barton's consciousness clean in two!

CHAPTER II

When Barton recovered the severed parts of his consciousness again andtried to pull them together, he found that the Present was strangelymissing. 

The Past and the Future, however, were perfectly plain to him. He wasa young stock-broker. He remembered that quite distinctly! And just assoon as the immediate dizzy mystery had been cleared up he would, ofcourse, be a young stock-broker again! But between this snugconviction as to the Past, this smug assurance as to the Future, hismind lay tugging and shivering like a man under a split blanket. Wherein creation was the Present? Alternately he tried to yank both Pastand Future across the chilly interim. 

"There was--a--green and white piazza corner, " vaguely his memoryreminded him. "Never again!" some latent determination leaped tomock him. And there had been--some sort of an argument--with adrollish old man--concerning all homely girls in general and onevery specially homely little girl in particular. And the--veryspecially homely little girl in particular had turned out to be theold man's--daughter!--"Never again!" his original impulse hastenedto reassure him. And there had been a horseback ride--with the girl. Oh, yes--out of some strained sense of--of parental humor--there hadbeen a forced horseback ride. And the weather hadbeen--hot--andblack--and then suddenly very yellow. Yellow? Yellow? Dizzily theworld began to whir through his senses--a prism of light, a fume ofsulphur! Yellow? Yellow? What was yellow? What was anything? Whatwas anything? Yes! That was just it! Where was anything?

Whimperingly, like a dream-dazed dog, the soul of him began toshiver with fear. Oh, ye gods! If returning consciousness would onlymanifest itself first by some one indisputable proof of a stillundisintegrated body, some crisp, reassuring method of outliningone's corporeal edges, some sensory roll-call, as it were of--head, hands, feet, sides! But out of oblivion, out of space abysmal, outof sensory annihilation, to come vaporing back, back, back, --headless, armless, legless, trunkless, conscious only of consciousness, uncertainyet whether the full awakening prove itself--this world or the next!As sacred of Heaven--as--of hell! As--!

Then very, very slowly, with no realization of eyelids, with norealization of lifting his eyelids, Barton began to see things. And hethought he was lying on the soft outer edges of a gigantic blackpansy, staring blankly through its glowing golden center into thedroll, sketchy little face of the pansy. 

And then suddenly, with a jerk that seemed almost to crack his spine, he sensed that the blackness wasn't a pansy at all, but just a round, earthy sort of blackness in which he himself lay mysteriously prone. And he heard the wind still roaring furiously away off somewhere. Andhe heard the rain still drenching and sousing away off somewhere. Butno wind seemed to be tugging directly at him, and no rain seemed to besplashing directly on him. And instead of the cavernous golden craterof a supernatural pansy there was just a perfectly tame yellowfarm-lantern balanced adroitly on a low stone in the middle of themysterious round blackness. 

And in the sallow glow of that pleasant lantern-light little EveEdgarton sat cross-legged on the ground with a great pulpy clutter ofrain-soaked magazines spread out all around her like a giant's pack ofcards. And diagonally across her breast from shoulder to waistline herlittle gray flannel shirt hung gashed into innumerable ribbons. 

To Barton's blinking eyes she looked exceedingly strange and untidy. But nothing seemed to concern little Eve Edgarton except thatspreading circle of half-drowned papers. 

"For Heaven's sake--wha--ght are you--do'?" mumbled Barton. 

Out from her flickering aura of yellow lantern-light little EveEdgarton peered forth quizzically into Barton's darkness. "Why--I'mtrying to save--my poor dear--books, " she drawled. 

"Wha--ght?" struggled Barton. The word dragged on his tonguelike a weight of lead. "Wha--ght?" he persisted desperately. "Wh--ere?--For--Heaven's sake--wha--ght's the matter--with us?"

Solicitously little Eve Edgarton lifted a soggy magazine-page to thelantern's warm, curving cheek. 

"Why--we're in my cave, " she confided. "In my very own--cave--youknow--that I was headed for--all the time. We got--sort of--struck bylightning, " she started to explain. "We--"

"Struck by--lightning?" gasped Barton. Mentally he started to jump up. But physically nothing moved. "My God! I'm paralyzed!" he screamed. 

"Oh, no--really--I don't think so, " crooned little Eve Edgarton. 

With the faintest possible tinge of reluctance she put down herpapers, picked up the lantern, and, crawling over to where Bartonlay, sat down cross-legged again on the ground beside him, and beganwith mechanically alternate fist and palm to rubadubdub andthump-thump-thump and stroke-stroke-stroke his utterly helplessbody. 

"Oh--of--course--you've had--an awfully close call!" she drummedresonantly upon his apathetic chest. "But I've seen--three lightningpeople--a lot worse off than you!" she kneaded reassuringly into hisinsensate neck-muscles. "And--they--came out of it--all right--after afew days!" she slapped mercilessly into his faintly conscious sides. 

Very slowly, very sluggishly, as his circulation quickened again, ahorrid suspicion began to stir in Barton's mind; but it took him along time to voice the suspicion in anything as loud and public aswords. 

"Miss--Edgarton!" he plunged at last quite precipitately. "MissEdgarton! Do I seem to have--any shirt on?"

"No, you don't seem to, exactly, Mr. Barton, " conceded little EveEdgarton. "And your skin--"

From head to foot Barton's whole body strained and twisted in a futileeffort to raise himself to at least one elbow. "Why, I'm stripped tomy waist!" he stammered in real horror. 

"Why, yes--of course, " drawled little Eve Edgarton. "And your skin--"Imperturbably as she spoke she pushed him down flat on the groundagain and began, with her hands edged vertically like two slim boards, to slash little blissful gashes of consciousness and pain into hisfrigid right arm. "You see--I had to take both your shirts, " sheexplained, "and what was left of your coat--and all of my coat--tomake a soft, strong rope to tie round under your arms so the horsecould drag you. "

"Did the roan drag me--'way up here?" groaned Barton a bit hazily. 

With the faintest possible gasp of surprise little Eve Edgartonstopped slashing his arm and, picking up the lantern, flashed itdisconcertingly across his blinking eyes and naked shoulders. "Theroans are in heaven, " she said quite simply. "It was Mother's horsethat dragged you up here. " As casually as if he had been a big dollshe reached out one slim brown finger and drew his under lip a littlebit down from his teeth. "My! But you're still blue!" she confidedfrankly. "I guess perhaps you'd better have a little more vodka. "

Again Barton struggled vainly to raise himself on one elbow. "Vodka?"he stammered. 

Again the lifted lantern light flashed disconcertingly across his faceand shoulders. "Why, don't you remember--anything?" drawled little EveEdgarton. "Not anything at all? Why, I must have worked over you twohours--artificial respiration, you know, and all that sort ofthing--before I even got you up here! My! But you're heavy!" shereproached him frowningly. "Men ought to stay just as light as theypossibly can, so when they get into trouble and things--it would beeasier for women to help them. Why, last year in the China Sea--withFather and five of his friends--!"

A trifle shiveringly she shrugged her shoulders. "Oh, well, never mindabout Father and the China Sea, " she retracted soberly. "It's onlythat I'm so small, you see, and so flexible--I can crawl 'round mostanywhere through port-holes and things--even if they're capsized. Sowe only lost one of them--one of Father's friends, I mean; and I neverwould have lost him if he hadn't been so heavy. "

"Hours?" gasped Barton irrelevantly. With a wry twist of his neck hepeered out through the darkness to where the freshening air, thesteady, monotonous slosh-slosh-slosh of rain, the pale intermittentflare of stale lightning, proclaimed the opening of the cave. 

"For Heaven's sake, wh-at--what time is it?" he faltered. 

"Why, I'm sure I don't know, " said little Eve Edgarton. "But I shouldguess it might be about eight or nine o'clock. Are you hungry?"

With infinite agility she scrambled to her knees and went darting offon all fours like a squirrel into some mysterious, clattery corner ofthe darkness from which she emerged at last with one little grayflannel arm crooked inclusively around a whole elbowful of treasure. 

"There, " she drawled. "There. There. There. "

Only the soft earthy thud that accompanied each "There" pointed theslightest significance to the word. The first thud was a slim, queer, stone flagon of vodka. Wanly, like some far pinnacle on some farRussian fortress, its grim shape loomed in the sallow lantern light. The second thud was a dust-colored basket of dates from somegreen-spotted Arabian desert. Vaguely its soft curving outline mergedinto shadow and turf. The third thud was a battered olddrinking-cup--dully silver, mysteriously Chinese. The fourth thud wasa big glass jar of frankly American beef. Familiarly, reassuringly, its sleek sides glinted in the flickering flame. 

"Supper, " announced little Eve Edgarton. 

As tomboyishly as a miniature brigand she crawled forward again intothe meager square of lantern-tinted earth and, yanking a revolver outof one boot-leg and a pair of scissors from the other, settled herselfwith unassailable girlishness to jab the delicate scissors-points intothe stubborn tin top of the meat jar. 

As though the tin had been his own flesh the act goaded Barton halfupright into the light--a brightly naked young Viking to the waist, avaguely shadowed equestrian Fashion Plate to the feet. 

"Well--I certainly never saw anybody like you before!" he glowered ather. 

With equal gravity but infinitely more deliberation little EveEdgarton returned the stare. "I never saw anybody like you before, either, " she said enigmatically. 

Barton winced back into the darkness. "Oh, I say, " he stammered. "Iwish I had a coat! I feel like a--like a--"

"Why--why?" droned little Eve Edgarton perplexedly. Out from theyellow heart of the pansy-blackness her small, grave, gnomish facepeered after him with pristine frankness. "Why--why--I think youlook--nice, " said little Eve Edgarton. 

With a really desperate effort Barton tried to clothe himself infacetiousness, if in nothing else. "Oh, very well, " he grinned feebly. "If you don't mind--there's no special reason, I suppose, why Ishould. "

Vaguely, blurrishly, like a figure on the wrong side of astained-glass window, he began to loom up again into the lanternlight. There was no embarrassment certainly about his hunger, nor anyaffectation at all connected with his thirst. Chokingly from thebattered silver cup he gulped down the scorching vodka. Ravenously heattacked the salty meat, the sweet, cloying dates. 

Watching him solemn-eyed above her own intermittent nibbles, the girlspoke out quite simply the thought that was uppermost in her mind. "This supper'll come in mighty handy, won't it, if we have to be outhere all night, Mr. Barton?"

"If we have to be out here--all night?" faltered Barton. 

Oh, ye gods! If just their afternoon ride together had been hoteltalk--as of course it was within five minutes after theirdeparture--what would their midnight return be? Or rather theirnon-return? Already through his addled brain he heard the monotonouscreak-creak of rocking-chair gossip, the sly jest of the smoking-room, the whispered excitement of the kitchen--all the sophisticated oldworldlings hoping indifferently for the best, all the unsophisticatedold prudes yearning ecstatically for the worst!

"If we have to stay out here all night?" he repeated wildly. "Oh, what--oh, what will your father say, Miss Edgarton?"

"What will Father say?" drawled little Eve Edgarton. Thuddingly sheset down the empty beef-jar. "Oh, Father'll say: What in creation isEve out trying to save to-night? A dog? A cat? A three-legged deer?"

"Well, what do you expect to save?" quizzed Barton a bit tartly. 

"Just--you, " acknowledged little Eve Edgarton without enthusiasm. "Andisn't it funny, " she confided placidly, "that I've never yet succeededin saving anything that I could take home with me--and keep! That'sthe trouble with boarding!"

In a vague, gold-colored flicker of appeal her lifted face flared outagain into Barton's darkness. Too fugitive to be called a smile, atremor of reminiscence went scudding across her mouth before thebrooding shadow of her old slouch hat blotted out her features again. 

"In India once, " persisted the dreary little voice, "in India once, when Father and I were going into the mountains for the summer, therewas a--there was a sort of fakir at one of the railway stations doingtricks with a crippled tiger-cub--a tiger-cub with a shot-off paw. Andwhen Father wasn't looking I got off the train and went back--and Ifollowed that fakir two days till he just naturally had to sell me thetiger-cub; he couldn't exactly have an Englishwoman following himindefinitely, you know. And I took the tiger-cub back with me toFather and he was very cunning--but--" Languorously the speech trailedoff into indistinctness. "But the people at the hotel were--wereindifferent to him, " she rallied whisperingly. "And I had to let himgo. "

"You got off a train? In India? Alone?" snapped Barton. "And wentfollowing a dirty, sneaking fakir for two days? Well, of all thecrazy--indiscreet--"

"Indiscreet?" mused little Eve Edgarton. Again out of the murkyblackness her tilted chin caught up the flare of yellow lantern-light. "Indiscreet?" she repeated monotonously. "Who? I?"

"Yes--you, " grunted Barton. "Traipsing 'round all alone--after--"

"But I never am alone, Mr. Barton, " protested the mild little voice. "You see I always have the extra saddle, the extra railway ticket, theextra what-ever-it-is. And--and--" Caressingly a little gold-tippedhand reached out through the shadows and patted something indistinctlymetallic. "My mother's memory? My father's revolver?" she drawled. "Why, what better company could any girl have? Indiscreet?" Slowly thetip of her little nose tilted up into the light. "Why, down in theTransvaal--two years ago, " she explained painstakingly, "why, down inthe Transvaal--two years ago--they called me the best-chaperoned girlin Africa. Indiscreet? Why, Mr. Barton, I never even saw an indiscreetwoman in all my life. Men, of course, are indiscreet sometimes, " sheconceded conscientiously. "Down in the Transvaal two years ago, I hadto shoot up a couple of men for being a little bit indiscreet, but--"

In one jerk Barton raised himself to a sitting posture. 

"You 'shot up' a couple of men?" he demanded peremptorily. 

Through the crook of a mud-smeared elbow shoving back the sodden brimof her hat, the girl glanced toward him like a vaguely perplexedlittle ragamuffin. "It was--messy, " she admitted softly. Out from hersnarl of storm-blown hair, tattered, battered by wind and rain, shepeered up suddenly with her first frowning sign of self-consciousness. "If there's one thing in the world that I regret, " she faltereddeprecatingly, "it's a--it's--an untidy fight. "

Altogether violently Barton burst out laughing. There was no mirth inthe laugh, but just noise. "Oh, let's go home!" he suggestedhysterically. 

"Home?" faltered little Eve Edgarton. With a sluggish sort of defianceshe reached out and gathered the big wet scrap-book to her breast. "Why, Mr. Barton, " she said, "we couldn't get home now in all thisstorm and darkness and wash-out--to save our lives. But even if itwere moonlight, " she singsonged, "and starlight--and high-noon; evenif there were--chariots--at the door, I'm not going home--now--tillI've finished my scrap-book--if it takes a week. "

"Eh?" jerked Barton. "What?" Laboriously he edged himself forward. Forfive hours now of reckless riding, of storm and privation, throughdeath and disaster, the girl had clung tenaciously to her books andpapers. What in creation was in them? "For Heaven's sake--MissEdgarton--" he began. 

"Oh, don't fuss--so, " said little Eve Edgarton. "It's nothing but mypaper-doll book. "

"Your PAPER-DOLL BOOK?" stammered Barton. With another racking efforthe edged himself even farther forward. "Miss Edgarton!" he asked quitefrankly, "are you--crazy?"

[Illustration: "Your PAPER-DOLL BOOK?" stammered Barton]

"N--o! But--very determined, " drawled little Eve Edgarton. Withunruffled serenity she picked up a pulpy magazine-page from theground in front of her and handed it to him. "And it--would greatlyfacilitate matters, Mr. Barton, " she confided, "if you would kindlybegin drying out some papers against your side of the lantern. "

"What?" gasped Barton. 

Very gingerly he took the pulpy sheet between his thumb andforefinger. It was a full-page picture of a big gas-range, and slowly, as he scanned it for some hidden charm or value, it split in two andfell soggily back to its mates. Once again for sheer nervous relief heburst out laughing. 

Out of her diminutiveness, out of her leanness, out of herextraordinary litheness, little Eve Edgarton stared up speculativelyat Barton's great hulking helplessness. Her hat looked humorous. Herhair looked humorous. Her tattered flannel shirt was distinctlyhumorous. But there was nothing humorous about her set little mouth. 

"If you--laugh, " she threatened, "I'll tip you over backwardagain--and--trample on you. "

"I believe you would!" said Barton with a sudden sobriety more packedwith mirth than any laugh he had ever laughed. 

"Well, I don't care, " conceded the girl a bit sheepishly. "Everybodylaughs at my paper-doll book! Father does! Everybody does! When I'mrearranging their old mummy collections--and cataloguing their oldSouth American birds--or shining up their old geologicalspecimens--they think I'm wonderful. But when I try to do theteeniest--tiniest thing that happens to interest me--they call me'crazy'! So that's why I come 'way out here to this cave--to play, "she whispered with a flicker of real shyness. "In all the world, " sheconfided, "this cave is the only place I've ever found where therewasn't anybody to laugh at me. "

Between her placid brows a vindictive little frown blackened suddenly. "That's why it wasn't specially convenient, Mr. Barton--to have youride with me this afternoon, " she affirmed. "That's why it wasn'tspecially convenient to--to have you struck by lightning thisafternoon!" Tragically, with one small brown hand, she pointed towardthe great water-soaked mess of magazines that surrounded her. "Yousee, " she mourned, "I've been saving them up all summer--to cutout--to-day! And now?--Now--? We're sailing for Melbourne Saturday!"she added conclusively. 

"Well--really!" stammered Barton. "Well--truly!--Well, of all--damnedthings! Why--what do you want me to do? Apologize to you for havingbeen struck by lightning?" His voice was fairly riotous withastonishment and indignation. Then quite unexpectedly one side of hismouth began to twist upward in the faintest perceptible sort of a realgrin. 

"When you smile like that you're--quite pleasant, " murmured little EveEdgarton. 

"Is that so?" grinned Barton. "Well, it wouldn't hurt you to smilejust a tiny bit now and then!"

"Wouldn't it?" said little Eve Edgarton. Thoughtfully for a moment, with her scissors poised high in the air, she seemed to be consideringthe suggestion. Then quite abruptly again she resumed her task ofprying some pasted object out of her scrap-book. "Oh, no, thank you, Mr. Barton, " she decided. "I'm much too bored--all the while--to doany smiling. "

"Bored?" snapped Barton. Staring perplexedly into her dreary, meeklittle face, something deeper, something infinitely subtler than merecuriosity, wakened precipitately in his consciousness. "For Heaven'ssake, Miss Edgarton!" he stammered. "From the Arctic Ocean to theSouth Seas, if you've seen all the things that you must have seen, ifyou've done all the things that you must have done--WHY SHOULD YOULOOK SO BORED?"

Flutteringly the girl's eyes lifted and fell. "Why, I'm bored, Mr. Barton, " drawled little Eve Edgarton, "I'm bored because--I'm sick todeath--of seeing all the things I've seen. I'm sick to death of--doingall the things I've done. " With little metallic snips of sound sheconcentrated herself and her scissors suddenly upon themahogany-colored picture of a pianola. 

"Well, what do you want?" quizzed Barton. 

In a sullen, turgid sort of defiance the girl lifted her somber eyesto his. "I want to stay home--like other people--and have a house, "she wailed. "I want a house--and--the things that go with a house: acat, and the things that go with a cat; kittens, and the things thatgo with kittens; saucers of cream, and the things that go with saucersof cream; ice-chests, and--and--" Surprisingly into her languid, sing-song tone broke a sudden note of passion. "Bah!" she snapped. "Think of going all the way to India just to plunge your arms into thespooky, foamy Ganges and 'make a wish'! 'What do you wish?' asksFather, pleased-as a Chessy-puss. Humph! I wish it was the soap-sudsin my own wash-tub!--Or gallivanting down to British Guiana just tosmell the great blowsy water-lilies in the canals! I'd rather smellburned crackers in my own cook stove!"

"But you'll surely have a house--some time, " argued Barton with realsympathy. Quite against all intention the girl's unexpected emotiondisturbed him a little. "Every girl gets a house--some time!" heinsisted resolutely. 

"N--o, I don't--think so, " mused Eve Edgarton judicially. "You see, "she explained with soft, slow deliberation, "you see, Mr. Barton, onlypeople who live in houses know people who live in houses! If you're anomad you meet--only nomads! Campers mate just naturally with campers, and ocean-travelers with ocean-travelers--and red-velvethotel-dwellers with red-velvet hotel-dwellers. Oh, of course, ifMother had lived it might have been different, " she added a triflemore cheerfully. "For, of course, if Mother had lived I should havebeen--pretty, " she asserted calmly, "or interesting-looking, anyway. Mother would surely have managed it--somehow; and I should have had alot of beaux--young men beaux I mean, like you. Father's friends areall so gray!--Oh, of course, I shall marry--some time, " she continuedevenly. "Probably I'm going to marry the British consul at Nunko-Nono. He's a great friend of Father's--and he wants me to help him write abook on 'The Geologic Relationship of Melanesia to the AustralianContinent'!"

Dully her voice rose to its monotone: "But I don't suppose--we shalllive in a--house, " she moaned apathetically. "At the best it willprobably be only a musty room or two up over the consulate--and morelikely than not it won't be anything at all except a nipa hut and atypewriter-table. "

As if some mote of dust disturbed her, suddenly she rubbed the knucklesof one hand across her eyes. "But maybe we'll have--daughters, "she persisted undauntedly. "And maybe they'll have houses!"

"Oh, shucks!" said Barton uneasily. "A--a house isn't so much!"

"It--isn't?" asked little Eve Edgarton incredulously. "Why--why--youdon't mean--"

"Don't mean--what?" puzzled Barton. 

"Do--you--live--in--a--house?" asked little Eve Edgarton abruptly. Herhands were suddenly quiet in her lap, her tousled head cocked ever soslightly to one side, her sluggish eyes incredibly dilated. 

"Why, of course I live in a house, " laughed Barton. 

"O--h, " breathed little Eve Edgarton. "Re--ally? It must bewonderful. " Wiltingly her eyes, her hands, drooped back to herscrap-book again. "In--all--my--life, " she resumed monotonously, "I'venever spent a single night--in a real house. "

"What?" questioned Barton. 

"Oh, of course, " explained the girl dully, "of course I've spent noend of nights in hotels and camps and huts and trains and steamersand--But--What color is your house?" she asked casually. 

"Why, brown, I guess, " said Barton. 

"Brown, you 'guess'?" whispered the girl pitifully. "Don't you--know?"

"No, I wouldn't exactly like to swear to it, " grinned Barton a bitsheepishly. 

Again the girl's eyes lifted just a bit over-intently from the work inher lap. 

"What color is the wall-paper--in your own room?" she asked casually. "Is it--is it a--dear pinkie-posie sort of effect? Or justplain--shaded stripes?"

"Why, I'm sure I don't remember, " acknowledged Barton worriedly. "Why, it's just paper, you know--paper, " he floundered helplessly. "Red, green, brown, white--maybe it's white, " he asserted experimentally. "Oh, for goodness' sake--how should I know!" he collapsed at last. "When my sisters were home from Europe last year, they fixed the wholeblooming place over for--some kind of a party. But I don't know that Iever specially noticed just what it was that they did to it. Oh, it'sall right, you know!" he attested with some emphasis. "Oh, it's allright enough--early Jacobean, or something like that--'perfectlycorking, ' everybody calls it! But it's so everlasting big, and itcosts so much to run it, and I've lost such a wicked lot of money thisyear, that I'm not going to keep it after this autumn--if my sistersever send me their Paris address so I'll know what to do with theirthings. "

Frowningly little Eve Edgarton bent forward. 

"'Some kind of a party?'" she repeated in unconscious mimicry. "Youmean you gave a party? A real Christian party? As recently as lastwinter? And you can't even remember what kind of a party it was?"Something in her slender brown throat fluttered ever so slightly. "Why, I've never even been to a Christian party--in all my life!" shesaid. "Though I can dance in every language of Asia!

"And you've got sisters?" she stammered. "Live silk-and-muslinsisters? And you don't even know where they are? Why, I've never evenhad a girl friend in all my life!"

Incredulously she lifted her puzzled eyes to his. "And you've got ahouse?" she faltered. "And you're not going to keep it? A real--trulyhouse? And you don't even know what color it is? You don't even knowwhat color your own room is? And I know the name of every house-paintthere is in the world, " she muttered, "and the name of everywall-paper there is in the world, and the name of every carpet, andthe name of every curtain, and the name of--everything. And I haven'tgot any house at all--"

Then startlingly, without the slightest warning, she pitched forwardsuddenly on her face and lay clutching into the turf--a littledust-colored wisp of a boyish figure sobbing its starved heart outagainst a dust-colored earth. 

"Why--what's the matter!" gasped Barton. "Why!--Why--Kid!" Verylaboriously with his numbed hands, with his strange, unresponsivelegs, he edged himself forward a little till he could just reach hershoulder. "Why--Kid!" he patted her rather clumsily. "Why, Kid--do youmean--"

Slowly through the darkness Eve Edgarton came crawling to his side. Solemnly she lifted her eyes to Barton's. "I'll tell you somethingthat Mother told me, " she murmured. "This is it: 'Your father is themost wonderful man that ever lived, ' my mother whispered to me quitedistinctly. 'But he'll never make any home for you--except in hisarms; and that is plenty Home-Enough for a wife--but not nearlyHome-Enough for a daughter! And--and--"

"Why, you say it as if you knew it by heart, " interrupted Barton. 

"Why, of course I know it by heart!" cried little Eve Edgarton almosteagerly. "My mother whispered it to me, I tell you! The things thatpeople shout at you--you forget in half a night. But the things thatpeople whisper to you, you remember to your dying day!"

"If I whisper something to you, " said Barton quite impulsively, "willyou promise to remember it to your dying day?"

"Oh, yes, Mr. Barton, " droned little Eve Edgarton. 

Abruptly Barton reached out and tilted her chin up whitely toward him. "In this light, " he whispered, "with your hat pushed backlike--that!--and your hair fluffed up like--that!--and the littlelaugh in your eyes!--and the flush!--and the quiver!--you look likean--elf! A bronze and gold elf! You're wonderful! You're magical! Youought always to dress like that! Somebody ought to tell you about it!Woodsy, storm-colored clothes with little quick glints of light inthem! Paquin or some of those people could make you famous!"

As spontaneously as he had touched her he jerked his hand away, and, snatching up the lantern, flashed it bluntly on her astonished face. 

For one brief instant her hand went creeping up to the tip of herchin. Then very soberly, like a child with a lesson, she began torepeat Barton's impulsive phrases. 

"'In this light, '" she droned, "'with your hat pushed back likethat--and your hair fluffed up like that--and the--the--'" Moreunexpectedly then than anything that could possibly have happened sheburst out laughing--a little low, giggly, school-girlish sort oflaugh. "Oh, that's easy to remember!" she announced. Then, all onenarrow black silhouette again, she crouched down into thesemi-darkness. 

"For a lady, " she resumed listlessly, "who rode side-saddle and reallyenjoyed hiking 'round all over the sticky face of the globe, my mothercertainly did guess pretty keenly just how things were going to bewith me. I'll tell you what she said to sustain me, " she repeateddreamily, "'Any foolish woman can keep house, but the woman whotravels with your father has got to be able to keep the whole wideworld for him! It's nations that you'll have to put to bed! And sunsand moons and stars that you'll have to keep scoured and bright! Butwith the whole green earth for your carpet, and shining heaven foryour roof-tree, and God Himself for your landlord, now wouldn't you bea fool, if you weren't quite satisfied?'"

"'If--you--weren't--quite satisfied, '" finished Barton mumblingly. 

Little Eve Edgarton lifted her great eyes, soft with sorrow, sharpwith tears, almost defiantly to Barton's. 

"That's--what--Mother said, " she faltered. "But all the same--I'dRATHER HAVE A HOUSE!"

"Why, you poor kid!" said Barton. "You ought to have a house! It's ashame! It's a beastly shame! It's a--"

Very softly in the darkness his hand grazed hers. 

"Did you touch my hand on purpose, or just accidentally?" asked EveEdgarton, without a flicker of expression on her upturned, gold-colored face. 

"Why, I'm sure I don't know, " laughed Barton. "Maybe--maybe it was alittle of each. "

With absolute gravity little Eve Edgarton kept right on staring athim. "I don't know whether I should ever specially like you--or not, Mr. Barton, " she drawled. "But you are certainly very beautiful!"

"Oh, I say!" cried Barton wretchedly. With a really desperate efforthe struggled almost to his feet, tottered for an instant, and thencame sagging down to the soft earth again--a great, sprawling, spineless heap, at little Eve Edgarton's feet. 

Unflinchingly, as if her wrists were built of steel wires, the girljumped up and pulled and tugged and yanked his almost dead weight intoa sitting posture again. 

"My! But you're chock-full of lightning!" she commiserated with him. 

Out of the utter rage and mortification of his helplessness Bartoncould almost have cursed her for her sympathy. Then suddenly, withoutwarning, a little gasp of sheer tenderness escaped him. 

"Eve Edgarton, " he stammered, "you're--a--brick! You--you must havebeen invented just for the sole purpose of saving people's lives. Oh, you've saved mine all right!" he acknowledged soberly. "And all thisblack, blasted night you've nursed me--and fed me--and jolliedme--without a whimper about yourself--without--a--" Impulsively hereached out his numb-palmed hand to her, and her own hand came so coldto it that it might have been the caress of one ghost to another. "EveEdgarton, " he reiterated, "I tell you--you're a brick! And I'm afool--and a slob--and a mutt-head--even when I'm not chock-full oflightning, as you call it! But if there's ever anything I can do foryou!"

"What did you say?" muttered little Eve Edgarton. 

"I said you were a brick!" repeated Barton a bit irritably. 

"Oh, no, I didn't mean--that, " mused the girl. "But what was the--lastthing you said?"

"Oh!" grinned Barton more cheerfully. "I said--if there was everanything that I could do for you, anything--"

"Would you rent me your attic?" asked little Eve Edgarton. 

"Would I rent you my attic?" stammered Barton. "Why in the worldshould you want to hire my attic?"

"So I could buy pretty things in Siam--or Ceylon--or any other queercountry--and have some place to send them, " said little Eve Edgarton. "Oh, I'd pay the express, Mr. Barton, " she hastened to assure him. "Oh, I promise you there never would be any trouble about the express!Or about the rent!" Expeditiously as she spoke she reached for her hippocket and brought out a roll of bills that fairly took Barton'sbreath away. "If there's one thing in the world, you know, that I'vegot, it's money, " she confided perfectly simply. "So you see, Mr. Barton, " she added with sudden wistfulness, "there's almost nothing onthe face of the globe that I couldn't have--if I only had some placeto put it. " Without further parleying she proffered the roll of billsto him. 

"Miss Edgarton! Are you crazy?" Barton asked again quiteprecipitously. 

Again the girl answered his question equally frankly, and withoutoffense. "Oh, no, " she said. "Only very determined. "

"Determined about what?" grinned Barton in spite of himself. 

"Determined about an attic, " drawled little Eve Edgarton. 

With an unwonted touch of vivacity she threw out one hand in a little, sharp gesture of appeal; but not a tone of her voice either quickenedor deepened. 

"Why, Mr. Barton, " she droned, "I'm thirty years old--and ever since Iwas born I've been traveling all over the world--in a steamer trunk. In a steamer trunk, mind you. With Father always standing over everypacking to make sure that we never carry anything that--isn'tnecessary. With Father, I said, " she re-emphasized by a suddendistinctness. "You know Father!" she added significantly. 

"Yes--I know 'Father, '" assented Barton with astonishing glibness. 

Once again the girl threw out her hand in an incongruous gesture ofappeal. 

"The things that Father thinks are necessary!" she exclaimed softly. Noiselessly as a shadow she edged herself forward into the light tillshe faced Barton almost squarely. "Maybe you think it's fun, Mr. Barton, " she whispered. "Maybe you think it's fun--at thirty years ofage--with all your faculties intact--to own nothing in the worldexcept--except a steamer trunkful of the things that Father thinks arenecessary!"

Very painstakingly on the fingers of one hand she began to enumeratethe articles in question. "Just your riding togs, " she said, "and sixsuits of underwear--and all the United States consular reports--andtwo or three wash dresses and two 'good enough' dresses--and a lot ofquinine--and--a squashed hat--and--and--" Very faintly the ghost of asmile went flickering over her lips--"and whatever microscopes andspecimen-cases get crowded out of Father's trunk. What's the use, Mr. Barton, " she questioned, "of spending a whole year investigating thesilk industry of China--if you can't take any of the silks home?What's the use, Mr. Barton, of rolling up your sleeves and working sixmonths in a heathen porcelain factory--just to study glaze--if youdon't own a china-closet in any city on the face of the earth?Why--sometimes, Mr. Barton, " she confided, "it seems as if I'd die ahorrible death if I couldn't buy things the way other people do--andsend them somewhere--even if it wasn't 'home'! The world is so full ofbeautiful things, " she mused. "White enamel bath-tubs--and Persianrugs--and the most ingenious little egg-beaters--and--"

"Eh?" stammered Barton. Quite desperately he rummaged his brain forsome sane-sounding expression of understanding and sympathy. 

"You could, I suppose, " he ventured, not too intelligently, "buy thethings and give them to other people. "

"Oh, yes, of course, " conceded little Eve Edgarton withoutenthusiasm. "Oh, yes, of course, you can always buy people the thingsthey want. But understand, " she said, "there's very littlesatisfaction in buying the things you want to give to people who don'twant them. I tried it once, " she confided, "and it didn't work. 

"The winter we were in Paraguay, " she went on, "in some stale oldEnglish newspaper I saw an advertisement of a white bedroom set. Therewere eleven pieces, and it was adorable, and it cost eighty-twopounds--and I thought after I'd had the fun of unpacking it, I couldgive it to a woman I knew who had a tea plantation. But the instantshe got it--she painted it--green! Now when you send to England foreleven pieces of furniture because they are white, " sighed little EveEdgarton, "and have them crated--because they're white--and sent tosea because they're white--and then carried overland--miles and milesand miles--on Indians' heads--because they're white, you sort of want'em to stay white. Oh, of course it's all right, " she acknowledgedpatiently. "The Tea Woman was nice, and the green paint by nomeans--altogether bad. Only, looking back now on our winter inParaguay, I seem to have missed somehow the particular thrill that Ipaid eighty-two pounds and all that freightage for. "

"Yes, of course, " agreed Barton. He could see that. 

"So if you could rent me your attic--" she resumed almost blithely. 

"But my dear child, " interrupted Barton, "what possible--"

"Why--I'd have a place then to send things to, " argued little EveEdgarton. 

"But you're off on the high seas Saturday, you say, " laughed Barton. 

"Yes, I know, " explained little Eve Edgarton just a bit impatiently. "But the high seas are so dull, Mr. Barton. And then we sail so long!"she complained. "And so far!--via this, via that, via every otherstupid old port in the world! Why, it will be months and months beforewe ever reach Melbourne! And of course on every steamer, " she beganto monotone, "of course on every steamer there'll be some one with amixed-up collection of shells or coins--and that will take all mymornings. And of course on every steamer there'll be somebodystruggling with the Chinese alphabet or the Burmese accents--and thatwill take all my afternoons. But in the evenings when people are justhaving fun, " she kindled again, "and nobody wants me for anything, why, then you see I could steal 'way up in the bow--where you're notallowed to go--and think about my beautiful attic. It's prettylonesome, " she whispered, "all snuggled up there alone with the night, and the spray and the sailors' shouts, if you haven't got anything atall to think about except just 'What's ahead?--What's ahead?--What'sahead?' And even that belongs to God, " she sighed a bit ruefully. 

With a quick jerk she edged herself even closer to Barton and satstaring up at him with her tousled head cocked on one side like aneager terrier. 

"So if you just--could, Mr. Barton!" she began all over again. "Andoh, I know it couldn't be any real bother to you!" she hastened toreassure him. "Because after Saturday, you know, I'll probablynever--never be in America again!"

"Then what satisfaction, " laughed Barton, "could you possibly get infilling up an attic with things that you will never see again?"

"What satisfaction?" repeated little Eve Edgarton perplexedly. "Whatsatisfaction?" Between her placid brows a very black frown deepened. "Why, just the satisfaction, " she said, "of knowing before you die, that you had definitely diverted to your own personality that muchspecific treasure out of the--out of the--world's chaotic maelstrom ofgeneralities. "

"Eh?" said Barton. "What? For Heaven's sake say it again!"

"Why--just the satisfaction--" began Eve Edgarton. Then abruptly thesullen lines grayed down again around her mouth. 

"It seems funny to me, Mr. Barton, " she almost whined, "that anybodyas big as you are--shouldn't be able to understand anybody as littleas--I am. But if I only had an attic!" she cried out with apparentirrelevance. "Oh, if just once in my whole life I could have even somuch as an atticful of home! Oh, please--please--please, Mr. Barton!"she pleaded. "Oh, please!"

Precipitously she lifted her small brown face to his, and in her eyeshe saw the strangest little unfinished expression flame up suddenlyand go out again, a little fleeting expression so sweet, so shy, sotranscendently lovely, that if it had ever lived to reach her frowningbrow, her sulky little mouth, her--!

Then startlingly into his stare, into his amazement, broke a greatwhite glare through the opening of the cave. 

"My God!" he winced, with his elbow across his eyes. 

"Why, it isn't lightning!" laughed little Eve Edgarton. "It's themoon!" Quick as a sprite she flashed to her feet and ran out into themoonlight. "We can go home now!" she called back triumphantly overher shoulder. 

"Oh, we can, can we?" snapped Barton. His nerves were strangely raw. He struggled to his knees, and tottered there watching the cheekylittle moonbeams lap up the mystery of the cave, and scare the yellowlantern-flame into a mere sallow glow. 

Poignantly from the forest he heard Eve Edgarton's voice calling outinto the night. "Come--Mother's--horse! Come--Mother's--horse H--o--o, hoo! Come--come--come!" Softly above the crackle of twigs, the thud ofa hoof, the creak of a saddle, he sensed the long, tremulous, answering whinny. Then almost like a silver apparition the girl'sfigure and the horse's seemed to merge together before him in themoonlight. 

"Well--of--all--things!" stammered Barton. 

"Oh, the horse is all right. I thought he'd stay 'round, " called thegirl. "But he's wild as a hawk--and it's going to be the dickens of ajob, I'm afraid, to get you up. "

Half walking, half crawling, Barton emerged from the cave. "To get meup?" he scoffed. "Well, what do you think you're going to do?" Limplyas he asked he sank back against the support of a tree. 

"Why, I think, " drawled Eve Edgarton, "I think--very naturally--thatyou're going to ride--and I'm going to walk--back to the hotel. "

"Well, I am not!" snapped Barton. "Well, you are not!" he protestedvehemently. "For Heaven's sake, Miss Edgarton, why don't you goscooting back on the gray and send a wagon or something for me?"

"Why, because it would make--such a fuss, " droned little Eve Edgartondrearily. "Doors would bang--and lights would blaze--and somebody'dscream--and--and--you make so much fuss when you're born, " she said, "and so much fuss when you die--don't you think it's sort of nice tokeep things as quietly to yourself as you can all the rest of yourdays?"

"Yes, of course, " acknowledged Barton. "But--"

"But NOTHING!" stamped little Eve Edgarton with suddenpassion. "Oh, Mr. Barton--won't you please hurry! It's almost dawnnow! And the nice hotel cook is very sick in a cot bed. And I promisedher faithfully this noon that I'd make four hundred muffins forbreakfast!"

"Oh, confound it!" said Barton. 

Stumblingly he reached the big gray's side. 

"But it's miles!" he protested in common decency. "Miles!--and miles!Rough walking, too, darned rough! And your poor little feet--"

"I don't walk particularly with my 'poor little feet, '" gibed EveEdgarton. "Most especially, thank you, Mr. Barton, I walk with my bigwanting-to-walk!"

"Oh, " said Barton. "O--h. " The bones in his knees began suddenly toslump like so many knots of tissue-paper. "Oh--all right--Eve!" hecalled out a bit hazily. 

Then slowly and laboriously, with a very good imitation of meekness, he allowed himself to be pulled and pushed and jerked to the top of anold tree-stump, and from there at last, with many tricks and tugs andsubterfuges, to the cramping side-saddle of the restive, rearing gray. Helplessly in the clear white moonlight he watched the girl's neckmuscles cord and strain. Helplessly in the clear white moonlight heheard the girl's breath rip and tear like a dry sob out of her gaspinglungs. And then at last, blinded with sweat, dizzy with weakness, asbreathless as herself, as wrenched, as triumphant, he found himselfclinging fast to a worn suede pommel, jogging jerkily down themountainside with Eve Edgarton's doll-sized hand dragging hard on thebig gray's curb and her whole tiny weight shoved back aslant andastrain against the big gray's too eager shoulder--little droll, colorless, "meek" Eve Edgarton, after her night of stress and terror, with her precious scrap-book still hugged tight under one armstriding stanchly home through the rough-footed, woodsy night to "makefour hundred muffins for breakfast!"

At the first crook in the trail she glanced back hastily over hershoulder into the rustling shadows. "Good-by, Cave!" she calledsoftly. "Good-by, Cave!" And once when some tiny woods-animal scuttledout from under her feet she smiled up a bit appealingly at Barton. Several times they stopped for water at some sudden noisy brook. Andonce, or twice, or even three times perhaps, when some blinding dazeof dizziness overwhelmed him, she climbed up with one foot into theroomy stirrup and steadied his swaying, unfeeling body against her ownlittle harsh, reassuring, flannel-shirted breast. 

Mile after mile through the jet-black lattice-work of the tree-topsthe August moon spotted brightly down on them. Mile after mile throughrolling pastures the moon-plaited stubble crackled and sucked like asheet of wet ice under their feet, then roads began--mere molten bogsof mud and moonlight; and little frail roadside bushes drunk with rainlay wallowing helplessly in every hollow. 

Out of this pristine, uninhabited wilderness the hotel buildingsloomed at last with startling conventionality. Even before theirdiscreetly shuttered windows Barton winced back again with a suddenhorrid new realization of his half-nakedness. 

"For Heaven's sake!" he cried, "let's sneak in the back way somewhere!Oh Lordy!--what a sight I am to meet your father!"

"What a sight you are to--meet my father?" repeated Eve Edgarton withastonishment. "Oh, please don't insist on waking up Father, " shebegged. "He hates so to be waked up. Oh, of course if I'd been hurt itwould have been courteous of you to tell him, " she explainedseriously. "But, oh, I'm sure he wouldn't like your waking him up justto tell him that you got hurt!"

Softly under her breath she began to whistle toward a shadow in thestable-yard. "Usually, " she whispered, "there's a sleepy stable-boylying round here somewhere. Oh--Bob!" she summoned. 

Rollingly the shadow named "Bob" struggled to its very real feet. 

"Here, Bob!" she ordered. "Come help Mr. Barton. He's pretty badlyoff. We got sort of struck by lightning. And two of us--got killed. Gohelp him up-stairs. Do anything he wants. But don't make any fuss. He'll be all right in the morning. "

Gravely she put out her hand to Barton, and nodded to the boy. 

"Good night!" she said. "And good night, Bob!"

Shrewdly for a moment she stood watching them out of sight, shivered alittle at the clatter of a box kicked over in some remote shed, andthen swinging round quickly, ripped the hot saddle from the big gray'sback, slipped the bit from his tortured tongue, and, turning him loosewith one sharp slap on his gleaming flank, yanked off her ownriding-boots and went scudding off in her stocking-feet throughinnumerable doors and else till, reaching the great empty office, shecaromed off suddenly up three flights of stairs to her own apartment. 

Once in her room her little traveling-clock told her it was a quarterof three. 

"Whew!" she said. Just "Whew!" Very furiously at the big porcelainwashbowl she began to splash and splash and splash. "If I've got tomake four hundred muffins, " she said, "I surely have got to be whiterthan snow!"

Roused by the racket, her father came irritably and stood in thedoorway. 

"Oh, my dear Eve!" he complained, "didn't you get wet enough in thestorm? And for mercy's sake where have you been?"

Out of the depths of her dripping hair and her big plushy bath-towellittle Eve Edgarton considered her father only casually. 

[Illustration: "Don't delay me!" she said, "I've got to make fourhundred muffins. "]

"Don't delay me!" she said, "I've got to make four hundred muffins!And I'm so late I haven't even time to change my clothes! We gotstruck by lightning, " she added purely incidentally. "That is--sort ofstruck by lightning. That is, Mr. Barton got sort of struck bylightning. And oh, glory, Father!" her voice kindled a little. "And, oh, glory, Father, I thought he was gone! Twice in the hours I wasworking over him he stopped breathing altogether!"

Palpably the vigor died out of her voice again. "Father, " she drawledmumblingly through intermittent flops of bath-towel; "Father--you saidI could keep the next thing I--saved. Do you think I could--keep him?"

CHAPTER III

"What?" demanded her father. 

Altogether unexpectedly little Eve Edgarton threw back her tousledhead and burst out laughing. 

"Oh, Father!" she jeered. "Can't you take a joke?"

"I don't know as you ever offered me one before, " growled her father abit ungraciously. 

"All the same, " asserted little Eve Edgarton with suddenseriousness--"all the same, Father, he did stop breathing twice. And Iworked and I worked and I worked over him!" Slowly her great eyeswidened. 

"And oh, Father, his skin!" she whispered simply. 

"Hush!" snapped her father with a great gust of resentment that hetook to be a gust of propriety. "Hush, I say! I tell you it isn'tdelicate for a--for a girl to talk about a man's skin!"

"Oh--but his skin was very delicate, " mused little Eve Edgartonpersistently. "There in the lantern light--"

"What lantern light?" demanded her father. 

"And the moonlight, " murmured little Eve Edgarton. 

"What moonlight?" demanded her father. A trifle quizzically he steppedforward and peered into his daughter's face. "Personally, Eve, " hesaid, "I don't care for the young man. And I certainly don't wish tohear anything about his skin. Not anything! Do you understand? I'mvery glad you saved his life, " he hastened to affirm. "It was verycommendable of you, I'm sure, and some one, doubtless, will be verymuch relieved. But for me personally the incident is closed! Closed, Isaid. Do you understand?"

Bruskly he turned back toward his own room, and then swung aroundagain suddenly in the doorway. 

"Eve, " he frowned. "That was a joke--wasn't it?--what you said aboutwanting to keep that young man?"

"Why, of course!" said little Eve Edgarton. 

"Well, I must say--it was an exceedingly clumsy one!" growled herfather irritably. 

"Maybe so, " droned little Eve Edgarton with unruffled serenity. "Itwas the first joke, you see, that I ever made. " Slowly again her eyesbegan to widen. "All the same, Father, " she said, "his--"

"Hush!" he ordered, and slammed the door conclusively behind him. 

Very thoughtfully for a moment little Eve Edgarton kept right onstanding there in the middle of the room. In her eyes was just thefaintest possible suggestion of a smile. But there was no smilewhatsoever about her lips. Her lips indeed were quite drawn and mostflagrantly set with the expression of one who, having somethingdeterminate to say, will--yet--say it, somewhere, sometime, somehow, though the skies fall and all the waters of the earth dry up. 

Then like the dart of a bird, she flashed to her father's door andopened it. 

"Father!" she whispered. "Father!"

"Yes, " answered the half-muffled, pillowy voice. "What is it?"

"Oh, I forgot to tell you something that happened once--down inIndo-China, " whispered little Eve Edgarton. "Once when you were away, "she confided breathlessly, "I pulled a half-drowned coolie out of acanal. "

"Well, what of it?" asked her father a bit tartly. 

"Oh, nothing special, " said little Eve Edgarton, "except that his skinwas like yellow parchment! And sand-paper! And old plaster!"

Without further ado then, she turned away, and, except for the singleecstatic episode of making the four hundred muffins for breakfast, resumed her pulseless role of being just--little Eve Edgarton. 

As for Barton, the subsequent morning hours brought sleep and sleeponly--the sort of sleep that fairly souses the senses in oblivion, weighing the limbs with lead, the brain with stupor, till the sleeperrolls out from under the load at last like one half paralyzed withcramp and helplessness. 

Certainly it was long after noon-time before Barton actually ralliedhis aching bones, his dizzy head, his refractory inclinations, to meetthe fluctuant sympathy and chaff that awaited him down-stairs in everynook and corner of the great, idle-minded hotel. 

Conscientiously, but without enthusiasm, from the temporary retreat ofthe men's writing-room, he sent up his card at last to Mr. Edgarton, and was duly informed that that gentleman and his daughter weremountain-climbing. In an absurd flare of disappointment then, he edgedhis way out through the prattling piazza groups to the shouting tennisplayers, and on from the shouting tennis players to the teasinggolfers, and back from the teasing golfers to the peacefulwriting-room, where in a great, lazy chair by the open window hesettled down once more with unwonted morbidness to brood over thegrimly bizarre happenings of the previous night. 

In a soft blur of sound and sense the names of other people camewafting to him from time to time, and once or twice at least the word"Barton" shrilled out at him with astonishing poignancy. Still like aman half drugged he dozed again--and woke in a vague, sweatingterror--and dozed again--and dreamed again--and roused himself at lastwith the one violent determination to hook his slipping consciousness, whether or no, into the nearest conversation that he could reach. 

The conversation going on at the moment just outside his window wasnot a particularly interesting one to hook one's attention into, butat least it was fairly distinct. In blissfully rational human voicestwo unknown men were discussing the non-domesticity of the modernwoman. It was not an erudite discussion, but just a mere personalcomplaint. 

"I had a house, " wailed one, "the nicest, coziest house you ever saw. We were two years building it. And there was a garden--a realjim-dandy flower and vegetable garden--and there were twenty-sevenfruit-trees. But my wife--" the wail deepened--"my wife--she justwould live in a hotel! Couldn't stand the 'strain, ' she said, of'planning food three times a day'! Not--'couldn't stand the strain ofearning meals three times a day'--you understand, " the wailing voiceadded significantly, "but couldn't stand the strain of ordering 'em. People all around you, you know, starving to death for just--bread;but she couldn't stand the strain of having to decide between squaband tenderloin! Eh?"

"Oh, Lordy! You can't tell me anything!" snapped the other voice moreincisively. "Houses? I've had four! First it was the cellar my wifewanted to eliminate! Then it was the attic! Then it was--We're livingin an apartment now!" he finished abruptly. "An apartment, mind you!One of those blankety--blank--blank--blank apartments!"

"Humph!" wailed the first voice again. "There's hardly a woman youmeet these days who hasn't got rouge on her cheeks, but a man's got togo back--two generations, I guess, if he wants to find one that's gotany flour on her nose!"

"Flour on her nose?" interrupted the sharper voice. "Flour on hernose? Oh, ye gods! I don't believe there's a woman in this whole hotelwho'd know flour if she saw it! Women don't care any more, I tell you!They don't care!"

Just as a mere bit of physical stimulus the crescendoish stridency ofthe speech roused Barton to a lazy smile. Then, altogetherunexpectedly, across indifference, across drowsiness, across absolutephysical and mental non-concern, the idea behind the speech camehurtling to him and started him bolt upright in his chair. 

"Ha!" he thought. "I know a girl that cares!" From head to foot asudden warm sense of satisfaction glowed through him, a throb ofpride, a puffiness of the chest. "Ha!" he gloated. "H--"

Then interruptingly from outside the window he heard the click ofchairs hitching a bit nearer together. 

"Sst!" whispered one voice. "Who's the freak in the 1830 clothes?"

"Why, that? Why, that's the little Edgarton girl, " piped the othervoice cautiously. "It isn't so much the '1830 clothes' as the 1830expression that gets me! Where in creation--"

"Oh, upon my soul, " groaned the man whose wife "would live in ahotel. " "Oh, upon my soul--if there's one thing that I can't standit's a woman who hasn't any style! If I had my way, " he threatenedwith hissing emphasis, "if I had my way, I tell you, I'd have everyhomely looking woman in the world put out of her misery! Put out of mymisery--is what I mean!"

"Ha! Ha! Ha!" chuckled the other voice. 

"Ha! Ha! Ha!" gibed both voices ecstatically together. 

With quite unnecessary haste Barton sprang to the window and lookedout. 

It was Eve Edgarton! And she did look funny! Not especially funny, butjust plain, every-day little-Eve-Edgarton funny, in a shabby oldEnglish tramping suit, with a knapsack slung askew across oneshoulder, a faded Alpine hat yanked down across her eyes, and onesteel-wristed little hand dragging a mountain laurel bush almost asbig as herself. Close behind her followed her father, equally shabby, his shapeless pockets fairly bulging with rocks, a battered tin botanykit in one hand, a dingy black camera-box in the other. 

Impulsively Barton started out to meet them, but just a step from thethreshold of the piazza door he sensed for the first time the longline of smokers watching the two figures grinningly above their puffybrown pipes and cigars. 

"What is it?" called one smoker to another. "Moving Day in JungleTown?"

"Ha! Ha! Ha!" tittered the whole line of smokers. "Ha!--Ha! Ha!Ha!--Ha!"

So, because he belonged, not so much to the type of person that can'tstand having its friends laughed at, as to the type that can't standhaving friends who are liable to be laughed at, Barton changed hismind quite precipitately about identifying himself at that particularmoment with the Edgarton family, and whirled back instead to thewriting-room. There, by the aid of the hotel clerk, and two bell-boys, and three new blotters, and a different pen, and an entirely freshbottle of ink, and just exactly the right-sized, the right-tinted sortof letter paper, he concocted a perfectly charming note to little EveEdgarton--a note full of compliment, of gratitude, of sincereappreciation, a note reiterating even once more his persistentintention of rendering her somewhere, sometime, a really significantservice!

Whereupon, thus duly relieved of his truly honest effort atself-expression, he went back again to his own kind--to theprattling, the well-groomed, the ultra-fashionables of both mind andbody. And there on the shining tennis-courts and the soft golf greens, through the late yellow afternoon and the first gray threat oftwilight, the old sickening ennui came creeping back to his senses, warring chaotically there with the natural nervous reaction of hisrecent adventure, till just out of sheer morbid unrest, as soon as theflower-scented, candle-lighted dinner hour was over, he went stalkinground and round the interminable piazzas, hunting in every dark cornerfor Mr. Edgarton and his daughter. 

Meeting them abruptly at last in the full glare of the office, heclutched fatuously at Mr. Edgarton's reluctant attention with somequick question about the extraordinary moonlight, and stood by, grinning like any bashful schoolboy, while Mr. Edgarton explained tohim severely, as if it were his fault, just why and to what extent theradii of mountain moonlight differed from the radii of any other kindof moonlight, and Eve herself, in absolute spiritual remoteness, stood patiently shifting her weight from one foot to the other, staring abstractedly all the time at the floor under her feet. 

Right into the midst of this instructive discourse broke one ofBarton's men friends with a sharp jog of his elbow, and a brief, apologetic nod to the Edgartons. 

"Oh, I say, Barton!" cried the newcomer, breathlessly. "That wedding, you know, over across at the Kentons' to-night, with the Vienneseorchestra--and Heaven knows what from New York? Well, we've shanghaiedthe whole business for a dance here to-morrow night! Music! Flowers!Palms! Catering! Everything! It's going to be the biggest littledancing party that this slice of North American scenery ever saw!And--"

Slowly little Eve Edgarton lifted her great solemn eyes to thenewcomer's face. 

"A party?" she drawled. "A--a--dancing party--you mean? Areal--Christian--dancing party?"

Dully the big eyes drooped again, and as if in mere casual mannerismher little brown hands went creeping up to the white breast of hergown. Then just as startling, just-as unprovable as the flash of ashooting star, her glance flashed up at Barton. 

"O--h!" gasped little Eve Edgarton. 

"O--h!" said Barton. 

Astoundingly in his ears bells seemed suddenly to be ringing. His headwas awhirl, his pulses fairly pounding with the weird, quixoticpurport of his impulse. 

"Miss Edgarton, " he began. "Miss--"

Then right behind him two older men joggled him awkwardly in passing. 

"--and that Miss Von Eaton, " chuckled one man to another. "Lordy!There'll be more than forty men after her for to-morrow night! Smith!Arnold! Hudson! Hazeltine! Who are you betting will get her?"

"I'M BETTING THAT I WILL!" crashed every brutallycompetitive male instinct in Barton's body. Impetuously he brokeaway from the Edgartons and darted off to find Miss Von Eaton before"Smith--Arnold--Hudson--Hazeltine"--or any other man should findher!

So he sent little Eve Edgarton a great, gorgeous box of candy instead, wonderful candy, pounds and pounds of it, fine, fluted chocolates, androse-pink bonbons, and fat, sugared violets, and all sorts oftin-foiled mysteries of fruit and spice. 

And when the night of the party came he strutted triumphantly to itwith Helene Von Eaton, who already at twenty was beginning to be justa little bit bored with parties; and together through all that riot ofmusic and flowers and rainbow colors and dazzling lights they trottedand tangoed with monotonous perfection--the envied and admired of allbeholders; two superbly physical young specimens of manhood andwomanhood, desperately condoning each other's dullnesses for the sakeof each other's good looks. 

And while Youth and its Laughter--a chaos of color and shrillcrescendos--was surging back and forth across the flower-wreathedpiazzas, and violins were wheedling, and Japanese lanterns drunk withcandle light were bobbing gaily in the balsam-scented breeze, littleEve Edgarton, up-stairs in her own room, was kneeling crampishly onthe floor by the open window, with her chin on the window-sill, staring quizzically down--down--down on all that joy and novelty, tillher father called her a trifle impatiently at last from his microscopetable on the other side of the room. 

"Eve!" summoned her father. "What an idler you are! Can't you see howworried I am over this specimen here? My eyes, I tell you, aren't whatthey used to be. "

Then, patiently, little Eve Edgarton scrambled to her feet and, crossing over to her father's table, pushed his head mechanicallyaside and, bending down, squinted her own eye close to his magnifyingglass. 

"Bell-shaped calyx?" she began. "Five petals of the corollary partlyunited? Why, it must be some relation to the Mexican rain-tree, " shemumbled without enthusiasm. "Leaves--alternate, bi-pinnate, verytypically--few foliate, " she continued. "Why, it's a--aPithecolobium. "

"Sure enough, " said Edgarton. "That's what I thought all the time. "

As one eminently relieved of all future worry in the matter, he jumpedup, pushed away his microscopic work, and, grabbing up the biggestbook on the table, bolted unceremoniously for an easy chair. 

Indifferently for a moment little Eve Edgarton stood watching him. Then heavily, like a sleepy, insistent puppy dog, she shambled acrossthe room and, climbing up into her father's lap, shoved aside herfather's book, and burrowed her head triumphantly back into the lean, bony curve of his shoulder, her whole yawning interest centeredapparently in the toes of her father's slippers. 

Then so quietly that it scarcely seemed abrupt, "Father, " she asked, "was my mother--beautiful?"

"What?" gasped Edgarton. "What?"

Bristling with a grave sort of astonishment he reached up nervouslyand stroked his daughter's hair. "Your mother, " he winced. "Yourmother was--to me--the most beautiful woman that ever lived! Suchexpression!" he glowed. "Such fire! But of such a spiritual modesty!Of such a physical delicacy! Like a rose, " he mused, "like arose--that should refuse to bloom for any but the hand that gatheredit. "

Languorously from some good practical pocket little Eve Edgartonextracted a much be-frilled chocolate bonbon and sat there munching itwith extreme thoughtfulness. Then, "Father, " she whispered, "I wish Iwas like--Mother. "

"Why?" asked Edgarton, wincing. 

"Because Mother's--dead, " she answered simply. 

Noisily, like an over conscious throat, the tiny traveling-clock onthe mantelpiece began to swallow its moments. One moment--twomoments--three--four--five--six moments--seven moments--on, on, on, gutturally, laboriously--thirteen--fourteen--fifteen--even twenty;with the girl still nibbling at her chocolate, and the man stillstaring off into space with that strange little whimper of painbetween his pale, shrewd eyes. 

It was the man who broke the silence first. Precipitately he shiftedhis knees and jostled his daughter to her feet. 

"Eve, " he said, "you're awfully spleeny to-night! I'm going to bed. "And he stalked off into his own room, slamming the door behind him. 

Once again from the middle of the floor little Eve Edgarton stoodstaring blankly after her father. Then she dawdled across the room andopened his door just wide enough to compass the corners of her mouth. 

"Father, " she whispered, "did Mother know that she was a rose--beforeyou were clever enough to find her?"

"N--o, " faltered her father's husky voice. "That was the miracle ofit. She never even dreamed--that she was a rose--until I found her. "

Very quietly little Eve Edgarton shut the door again and came backinto the middle of her room and stood there hesitatingly for aninstant. 

Then quite abruptly she crossed to her bureau and pushing aside theold ivory toilet articles, began to jerk her tously hair first one wayand then another across her worried forehead. 

"But if you knew you were a rose?" she mused perplexedly to herself. "That is--if you felt almost sure that you were, " she added withsudden humility. "That is--" she corrected herself--"that is--if youfelt almost sure that you could be a rose--if anybody wanted you to beone?"

In impulsive experimentation she gave another tweak to her hair, andpinched a poor bruised-looking little blush into the hollow of onethin little cheek. "But suppose it was the--the people--going by, " shefaltered, "who never even dreamed that you were a rose? Suppose it wasthe--Suppose it was--Suppose--"

Dejection unspeakable settled suddenly upon her--an agonizing sense ofyouth's futility. Rackingly above the crash and lilt of music, thequick, wild thud of dancing feet, the sharp, staccato notes oflaughter--she heard the dull, heavy, unrhythmical tread of theoncoming years--gray years, limping eternally from to-morrow on, through unloved lands, on unloved errands. 

"This is the end of youth. It is--it is--it is, " whimpered her heart. 

"It ISN'T!" something suddenly poignant and determinate shrilledstartlingly in her brain. "I'll have one more peep at youth, anyway!"threatened the brain. 

"If we only could!" yearned the discouraged heart. 

Speculatively for one brief instant the girl stood cocking her headtoward the door of her father's room. Then, expeditiously, if notfashionably, she began at once to rearrange her tousled hair, andafter one single pat to her gown--surely the quickest toilet-making ofthat festive evening--snatched up a slipper in each hand, crept safelypast her father's door, crept safely out at last through her own doorinto the hall, and still carrying a slipper in each hand, had reachedthe head of the stairs before a new complexity assailed her. 

"Why--why, I've never yet--been anywhere--alone--without my mother'smemory!" she faltered, aghast. 

Then impetuously, with a little frown of material inconvenience, butno flicker whatsoever in the fixed spiritual habit of her life, shedropped her slippers on the floor, sped back to her room, hesitated onthe threshold a moment with real perplexity, darted softly to hertrunk, rummaged as noiselessly through it as a kitten's paws, discovered at last the special object of her quest--a filmy square ofold linen and lace--thrust it into her belt with her own handkerchief, and went creeping back again to her slippers at the head of thestairs. 

As if to add fresh nervousness to the situation, one of the slipperslay pointing quite boldly down-stairs. But the other slipper--true asa compass to the north--toed with unmistakable severity toward thebedroom. 

Tentatively little Eve Edgarton inserted one foot in the timidslipper. The path back to her room was certainly the simplest paththat she knew--and the dullest. Equally tentatively she withdrew fromthe timid slipper and tried the adventurous one. "O-u-c-h!" she criedout loud. The sole of the second slipper seemed fairly sizzling withexcitement. 

With a slight gasp of impatience, then, she reached out and pulled thetimid slipper back into line, stepped firmly into it, pointed bothslipper-toes unswervingly southward, and proceeded on down-stairs toinvestigate the "Christian Dance. "

At the first turn of the lower landing she stopped short, with everyennui-darkened sense in her body "jacked" like a wild deer's sensesbefore the sudden dazzle of sight, sound, scent that awaited herbelow. Before her blinking eyes she saw even the empty, humdrum hoteloffice turned into a blazing bower of palms and roses and electriclights. Beyond this bower a corridor opened out--more dense, moresweet, more sparkling. And across this corridor the echo of the unseenball came diffusing through the palms--the plaintive cry of a violin, the rippling laugh of a piano, the swarming hum of human voices, theswish of skirts, the agitant thud-thud-thud of dancing feet, thethrob, almost, of young hearts--a thousand commonplace, every-daysounds merged here and now into one magic harmony that thrilled littleEve Edgarton as nothing on God's big earth had ever thrilled herbefore. 

Hurriedly she darted down the last flight of steps and sped across thebright office to the dark veranda, consumed by one fuming, passionate, utterly uncontrollable curiosity to see with her own eyes just whatall that wonderful sound looked like!

Once outside in the darkness her confusion cleared a little. It waslate, she reasoned--very, very late, long after midnight probably; forof all the shadowy, flickering line of evening smokers that usuallycrowded that particular stretch of veranda only a single distant glowor two remained. Yet even now in the almost complete isolation of hersurroundings the old inherent bashfulness swept over her again andwarred chaotically with her insistent purpose. As stealthily aspossible she crept along the dark wall to the one bright spot thatflared forth like a lantern lens from the gay ballroom--creptalong--crept along--a plain little girl in a plain little dress, yearning like all the other plain little girls of the world, in allthe other plain little dresses of the world, to press her wistfullittle nose just once against some dazzling toy-shop window. 

With her fingers groping at last into the actual shutters of thatcoveted ballroom window, she scrunched her eyes up perfectly tight foran instant and then opened them, staring wide at the entrancing scenebefore her. 

"O--h!" said little Eve Edgarton. "O--h!"

The scene was certainly the scene of a most madcap summer carnival. Palms of the far December desert were there! And roses from the near, familiar August gardens! The swirl of chiffon and lace and silk waslike a rainbow-tinted breeze! The music crashed on the senses likeblows that wasted no breath in subtler argument! Naked shouldersgleamed at every turn beneath their diamonds! Silk stockings baredtheir sheen at each new rompish step! And through the dizzy mystery ofit all--the haze, the maze, the vague, audacious unreality, --grimlyconventional, blatantly tangible white shirt-fronts surrounded bygreat black blots of men went slapping by--each with its share offairyland in its arms!

"Why! They're not dancing!" gasped little Eve Edgarton. "They're justprancing!"

Even so, her own feet began to prance. And very faintly across hercheek-bones a little flicker of pink began to glow. 

Then very startlingly behind her a man's shadow darkened suddenly, and, sensing instantly that this newcomer also was interested in theview through the window, she drew aside courteously to give him hisshare of the pleasure. In her briefest glance she saw that he was noone whom she knew, but in the throbbing witchery of the moment heseemed to her suddenly like her only friend in the world. 

"It's pretty, isn't it?" she nodded toward the ballroom. 

Casually the man bent down to look until his smoke-scented cheekalmost grazed hers. "It certainly is!" he conceded amiably. 

Without further speech for a moment they both stood there peering intothe wonderful picture. Then altogether abruptly, and with no excusewhatsoever, little Eve Edgarton's heart gave a great, big lurch, and, wringing her small brown hands together so that by no grave mischanceshould she reach out and touch the stranger's sleeve as she peered upat him, "I--can dance, " drawled little Eve Edgarton. 

Shrewdly the man's glance flashed down at her. Quite plainly herecognized her now. She was that "funny little Edgarton girl. " That'sexactly who she was! In the simple, old-fashioned arrangement of herhair, in the personal neatness but total indifference to fashion ofher prim, high-throated gown, she represented--frankly--everythingthat he thought he most approved in woman. But nothing under thestarry heavens at that moment could have forced him to lead her as apartner into that dazzling maelstrom of Mode and Modernity, becauseshe looked "so horridly eccentric and conspicuous"--compared to thegirls that he thought he didn't approve of at all!

"Why, of course you can dance! I only wish I could!" he liedgallantly. And stole away as soon as he reasonably could to findanother partner, trusting devoutly that the darkness had not divulgedhis actual features. 

Five minutes later, through the window-frame of her magic picture, little Eve Edgarton saw him pass, swinging his share of fairyland inhis arms. 

And close behind him followed Barton, swinging his share of fairylandin his arms! Barton the wonderful--at his best! Barton thewonderful--with his best, the blonde, blonde girl of the marvelousgowns and hats. There was absolutely no doubt whatsoever about them. They were the handsomest couple in the room!

Furtively from her hidden corner little Eve Edgarton stood andwatched them. To her appraising eyes there were at least two othergirls almost as beautiful as Barton's partner. But no other man in theroom compared with Barton. Of that she was perfectly sure! His brow, his eyes, his chin, the way he held his head upon his wonderfulshoulders, the way he stood upon his feet, his smile, his laugh, thevery gesture of his hands!

Over and over again as she watched, these two perfect partners camecircling through her vision, solemnly graceful or rhythmicallyhoydenish--two fortune-favored youngsters born into exactly the samesphere, trained to do exactly the same things in exactly the same way, so that even now, with twelve years' difference in age between them, every conscious vibration of their beings seemed to be tunedinstinctively to the same key. 

Bluntly little Eve Edgarton looked back upon the odd, haphazardtraining of her own life. Was there any one in this world whosetraining had been exactly like hers? Then suddenly her elbow wentcrooking up across her eyes to remember how Barton had looked in thestormy woods that night--lying half naked--and almost wholly dead--ather feet. Except for her odd, haphazard training, he would have beendead! Barton, the beautiful--dead? And worse than dead--buried? Andworse than--

Out of her lips a little gasp of sound rang agonizingly. 

And in that instant, by some trick-fashion of the dance, therollicking music stopped right off short in the middle of a note, thelights went out, the dancers fled precipitously to their seats, andout of the arbored gallery of the orchestra a single swarthy-facedmale singer stepped forth into the wan wake of an artificial moon, andlifted up a marvelous tenor voice in one of those weird folk-songs ofthe far-away that fairly tear the listener's heart out of his body--asong as sinisterly metallic as the hum of hate along a dagger-blade; asong as rapturously surprised at its own divinity as the first trillof a nightingale; a song of purling brooks and grim, gray mountainfortresses; a song of quick, sharp lights and long, low, lazycadences; a song of love and hate; a song of all joys and allsorrows--and then death; the song of Sex as Nature sings it--theplaintive, wheedling, passionate song of Sex as Nature sings ityet--in the far-away places of the earth. 

To no one else in that company probably did a single word penetrate. Merely stricken dumb by the vibrant power of the voice, vaguelyuneasy, vaguely saddened, group after group of hoydenish youngstershuddled in speechless fascination around the dark edges of the hall. 

But to little Eve Edgarton's cosmopolitan ears each familiar gipsyishword thus strangely transplanted into that alien room was like a callto the wild--from the wild. 

So--as to all repressed natures the moment of full self-expressioncomes once, without warning, without preparation, without evenconscious acquiescence sometimes--the moment came to little EveEdgarton. Impishly first, more as a dare to herself than as anythingelse, she began to hum the melody and sway her body softly to and froto the rhythm. 

Then suddenly her breath began to quicken, and as one half hypnotizedshe went clambering through the window into the ballroom, stood for aninstant like a gray-white phantom in the outer shadows, then, with alaugh as foreign to her own ears as to another's, snatched up a great, square, shimmering silver scarf that gleamed across a deserted chair, stretched it taut by its corners across her hair and eyes, and with aqueer little cry--half defiance, half appeal--a quick dart, a long, undulating glide--merged herself into the dagger-blade, thenightingale, the grim mountain fortress, the gay mocking brook, allthe love, all the rapture, all the ghastly fatalism of thatheartbreaking song. 

Bent as a bow her lithe figure curved now right, now left, to thelilting cadence. Supple as a silken tube her slender body seemed todrink up the fluid sound. No one could have sworn in that vague lightthat her feet even so much as touched the ground. She was a wraith! Aphantasy! A fluctuant miracle of sound and sense!

Tremulously the singer's voice faltered in his throat to watch hissong come gray-ghost-true before his staring eyes. With scantrestraint the crowd along the walls pressed forward, halfpleasure-mad, to solve the mystery of the apparition. Abruptly thesong stopped! The dancer faltered! Lights blazed! A veritable shriekof applause went roaring to the roof-tops!

And little Eve Edgarton in one wild panic-stricken surge of terrorwent tearing off through a blind alley of palms, dodging a cafe table, jumping an improvised trellis--a hundred pursuing voices yelling:"Where is she? Where is she?"--the telltale tinsel scarf flappingfrenziedly behind her, flapping--flapping--till at last, between onehigh, garnished shelf and another it twined its vampirish chiffonaround the delicate fronds of a huge potted fern! There was ajerk, --a blur, --a blow, the sickening crash of fallen pottery--Andlittle Eve Edgarton crumpled up on the floor, no longer "colorless"among the pale, dry, rainbow tints and shrill metallic glints of thatmost wondrous scene. 

Under her crimson mask, when the rescuers finally reached her, she layas perfectly disguised as even her most bashful mood could havewished. 

All around her--kneeling, crowding, meddling, interfering--frightenedpeople queried: "Who is she? Who is she?" Now and again from out ofthe medley some one offered a half-articulate suggestion. It was thehotel proprietor who moved first. Clumsily but kindly, with a fat handthrust under her shoulders, he tried to raise her head from the floor. Barton himself, as the most recently returned from the "Dark Valley, "moved next. Futilely, with a tiny wisp of linen and lace that he foundat the girl's belt, he tried to wipe the blood from her lips. 

"Who is she? Who is she?" the conglomerate hum of inquiry rose andfell like a moan. 

Beneath the crimson stain on the little lace handkerchief a trace ofindelible ink showed faintly. Scowlingly Barton bent to decipher it. "Mother's Little Handkerchief, " the marking read. "'Mother's?'" Bartonrepeated blankly. Then suddenly full comprehension broke upon him, and, horridly startled and shocked with a brand-new realization of thetragedy, he fairly blurted out his astonishing information. 

"Why--why, it's the--little Edgarton girl!" he hurled like a bombshellinto the surrounding company. 

Instantly, with the mystery once removed, a dozen hysterical peopleseemed startled into normal activity. No one knew exactly what to do, but some ran for water and towels, and some ran for the doctor, andone young woman with astonishing acumen slipped out of her white silkpetticoat and bound it, blue ribbons and all, as best she could, around Eve Edgarton's poor little gashed head. 

[Illustration: Suddenly full comprehension broke upon him and hefairly blurted out his astonishing information]

"We must carry her up-stairs!" asserted the hotel proprietor. 

"I'll carry her!" said Barton quite definitely. 

Fantastically the procession started upward--little Eve Edgarton whiteas a ghost now in Barton's arms, except for that one persistenttrickle of red from under the loosening edge of her huge Oriental-liketurban of ribbon and petticoat; the hotel proprietor still worryingeternally how to explain everything; two or three well-intentionedwomen babbling inconsequently of other broken heads. 

In astonishingly slow response to as violent a knock as they thoughtthey gave, Eve Edgarton's father came shuffling at last to the door togreet them. Like one half paralyzed with sleep and perplexity, hestood staring blankly at them as they filed into his rooms with theirburden. 

"Your daughter seems to have bumped her head!" the hotel proprietorbegan with professional tact. 

In one gasping breath the women started to explain their version ofthe accident. 

Barton, as dumb as the father, carried the girl directly to the bedand put her down softly, half lying, half sitting, among the greatpile of night-crumpled pillows. Some one threw a blanket over her. Andabove the top edge of that blanket nothing of her showed except thegrotesquely twisted turban, the whole of one white eyelid, the half ofthe other, and just that single persistent trickle of red. Raspishlyat that moment the clock on the mantelpiece choked out the hour ofthree. Already Dawn was more than half a hint in the sky, and in theghastly mixture of real and artificial light the girl's doom lookedalready sealed. 

Then very suddenly she opened her eyes and stared around. 

"Eve!" gasped her father, "what have you been doing?"

Vaguely the troubled eyes closed, and then opened again. "Iwas--trying--to show people--that I was a--rose, " mumbled little EveEdgarton. 

Swiftly her father came running to her side. He thought it was herdeathbed statement. "But Eve?" he pleaded. "Why, my own little girl. Why, my--"

Laboriously the big eyes lifted to his. "Mother was a rose, " persistedthe stricken lips desperately. 

"Yes, I know, " sobbed her father. "But--but--"

"But--nothing, " mumbled little Eve Edgarton. With an almost superhumaneffort she pushed her sharp little chin across the confining edge ofthe blanket. Vaguely, unrecognizingly then, for the first time, herheavy eyes sensed the hotel proprietor's presence and worried theirway across the tearful ladies to Barton's harrowed face. 

"Mother--was a rose, " she began all over again. "Mother--was a rose. Mother--was--a rose, " she persisted babblingly. "And Father--g-guessedit--from the very first! But as for me--?" Weakly she began to claw ather incongruous bandage. "But--as--for me, " she gasped, "the way I'mfixed!--I have to--announce it!"

CHAPTER IV

The Edgartons did not start for Melbourne the following day! Nor thenext--nor the next--nor even the next. 

In a head-bandage much more scientific than a blue-ribboned petticoat, but infinitely less decorative, little Eve Edgarton lay imprisonedamong her hotel pillows. 

Twice a day, and oftener if he could justify it, the village doctorcame to investigate pulse and temperature. Never before in all hishumdrum winter experience, or occasional summer-tourist vagary, had heever met any people who prated of camels instead of motor-cars, ordeprecated the dust of Abyssinia on their Piccadilly shoes, or sighedindiscriminately for the snow-tinted breezes of the Klondike andCeylon. Never, either, in all his full round of experience had thevillage doctor had a surgical patient as serenely complacent as littleEve Edgarton, or any anxious relative as madly restive as little EveEdgarton's father. 

For the first twenty-four hours, of course, Mr. Edgarton was much tooworried over the accident to his daughter to think for a moment of theaccident to his railway and steamship tickets. For the secondtwenty-four hours he was very naturally so much concerned with thereadjustment of his railway and steamship tickets that he neverconcerned himself at all with the accident to his plans. But by theend of the third twenty-four hours, with his first two worriesreasonably eliminated, it was the accident to his plans that smoteupon him with the fiercest poignancy. Let a man's clothes and togsvacillate as they will between his trunk and his bureau--once thatman's spirit is packed for a journey nothing but journey's end canever unpack it again!

With his own heart tuned already to the heart-throb of an engine, hispale eyes focused squintingly toward expected novelties, his thinnostrils half a-sniff with the first salty scent of the Far-Away, Mr. Edgarton, whatever his intentions, was not the most ideal of sick-roomcompanions. Too conscientious to leave his daughter, too unhappy tostay with her, he spent the larger part of his days and nights pacingup and down like a caged beast between the two bedrooms. 

It was not till the fifth day, however, that his impatience actuallyburst the bounds he had set for it. Somewhere between his maple bureauand Eve's mahogany bed the actual explosion took place, and in thatexplosion every single infinitesimal wrinkle of brow, cheek, chin, nose, was called into play, as if here at last was a man who intendedonce and for all time to wring his face perfectly dry of all humanexpression. 

"Eve!" hissed her father. "I hate this place! I loathe this place! Iabominate it! I despise it! The flora is--execrable! The fauna? Nil!And as to the coffee--the breakfast coffee? Oh, ye gods! Eve, if we'redelayed here another week--I shall die! Die, mind you, at sixty-two!With my life-work just begun, Eve! I hate this place! I abominate it!I de--"

"Really?" mused little Eve Edgarton from her white pillows. "Why--Ithink it's lovely. "

"Eh?" demanded her father. "What? Eh?"

"It's so social, " said little Eve Edgarton. 

"Social?" choked her father. 

As bereft of expression as if robbed of both inner and outer vision, little Eve Edgarton lifted her eyes to his. "Why--two of the hotelladies have almost been to see me, " she confided listlessly. "And thechambermaid brought me the picture of her beau. And the hotelproprietor lent me a story-book. And Mr. --"

"Social?" snapped her father. 

"Oh, of course--if you got killed in a fire or anything, savingpeople's lives, you'd sort of expect them to--send you candy--or makeyou some sort of a memorial, " conceded little Eve Edgartonunemotionally. "But when you break your head--just amusing yourself?Why, I thought it was nice for the hotel ladies to almost come to seeme, " she finished, without even so much as a flicker of the eyelids. 

Disgustedly her father started for his own room, then whirled abruptlyin his tracks and glanced back at that imperturbable little figure inthe big white bed. Except for the scarcely perceptible hound-likeflicker of his nostrils, his own face held not a whit more expressionthan the girl's. 

"Eve, " he asked casually, "Eve, you're not changing your mind, areyou, about Nunko-Nono? And John Ellbertson? Good old John Ellbertson, "he repeated feelingly. "Eve!" he quickened with sudden sharpness. "Surely nothing has happened to make you change your mind aboutNunko-Nono? And good old John Ellbertson?"

"Oh--no--Father, " said little Eve Edgarton. Indolently she withdrewher eyes from her father's and stared off Nunko-Nonoward--in a hazy, geographical sort of a dream. "Good old John Ellbertson--good old JohnEllbertson, " she began to croon very softly to herself. "Good oldJohn Ellbertson. How I do love his kind brown eyes--how I do--"

"Brown eyes?" snapped her father. "Brown? John Ellbertson's got thegrayest eyes that I ever saw in my life!"

Without the slightest ruffle of composure little Eve Edgarton acceptedthe correction. "Oh, has he?" she conceded amiably. "Well, then, goodold John Ellbertson--good old John Ellbertson--how I do love hiskind--gray eyes, " she began all over again. 

Palpably Edgarton shifted his standing weight from one foot to theother. "I understood--your mother, " he asserted a bit defiantly. 

"Did you, dear? I wonder?" mused little Eve Edgarton. 

"Eh?" jerked her father. 

Still with the vague geographical dream in her eyes, little EveEdgarton pointed off suddenly toward the open lid of her steamertrunk. 

"Oh--my manuscript notes, Father, please!" she ordered almostperemptorily, "John's notes, you know? I might as well be working onthem while I'm lying here. "

Obediently from the tousled top of the steamer trunk her fatherreturned with the great batch of rough manuscript. "And my pencil, please, " persisted little Eve Edgarton. "And my eraser. And mywriting-board. And my ruler. And my--"

Absent-mindedly, one by one, Edgarton handed the articles to her, andthen sank down on the foot of her bed with his thin-lipped mouthcontorted into a rather mirthless grin. "Don't care much for your oldfather, do you?" he asked trenchantly. 

Gravely for a moment the girl sat studying her father's weather-beatenfeatures, the thin hair, the pale, shrewd eyes, the gaunt cheeks, theindomitable old-young mouth. Then a little shy smile flickered acrossher face and was gone again. 

"As a parent, dear, " she drawled, "I love you to distraction! But as adaily companion?" Vaguely her eyebrows lifted. "As a real playmate?"Against the starch-white of her pillows the sudden flutter of hersmall brown throat showed with almost startling distinctness. "But asa real playmate, " she persisted evenly, "you are so--intelligent--andyou travel so fast--it tires me. "

"Whom do you like?" asked her father sharply. 

The girl's eyes were suddenly sullen again--bored, distrait, inestimably dreary. "That's the whole trouble, " she said. "You'venever given me time--to like anybody. "

"Oh, but--Eve, " pleaded her father. Awkward as any schoolboy, he satthere, fuming and twisting before this absurd little bunch of nerveand nerves that he himself had begotten. "Oh, but Eve, " he deprecatedhelplessly, "it's the deuce of a job for a--for a man to be left allalone in the world with a--with a daughter! Really it is!"

Already the sweat had started on his forehead, and across one cheekthe old gray fretwork of wrinkles began to shadow suddenly. "I'vedone my best!" he pleaded. "I swear I have! Only I've never known how!With a mother, now, " he stammered, "with a wife, with a sister, withyour best friend's sister, you know just what to do! It's a definiterelation! Prescribed by a definite emotion! But a daughter? Oh, yegods! Your whole sexual angle of vision changed! A creature neitherfish, flesh, nor fowl! Non-superior, non-contemporaneous, non-subservient! Just a lady! A strange lady! Yes, that's exactly it, Eve--a strange lady--growing eternally just a little bit morestrange--just a little bit more remote--every minute of her life! Yetit's so--damned intimate all the time!" he blurted out passionately. "All the time she's rowing you about your manners and your morals, allthe time she's laying down the law to you about the tariff or theturnips, you're remembering--how you used to--scrub her--in her firstlittle blue-lined tin bath-tub!"

Once again the flickering smile flared up in little Eve Edgarton'seyes and was gone again. A trifle self-consciously she burrowed backinto her pillows. When she spoke her voice was scarcely audible. "Oh, I know I'm funny, " she admitted conscientiously. 

"You're not funny!" snapped her father. 

"Yes, I am, " whispered the girl. 

"No, you're not!" reasserted her father with increasing vehemence. "You're not! It's I who am funny! It's I who--" In a chaos of emotionhe slid along the edge of the bed and clasped her in his arms. Justfor an instant his wet cheek grazed hers, then: "All the same, youknow, " he insisted awkwardly, "I hate this place!"

Surprisingly little Eve Edgarton reached up and kissed him full on themouth. They were both very much embarrassed. 

"Why--why, Eve!" stammered her father. "Why, my little--little girl!Why, you haven't kissed me--before--since you were a baby!"

"Yes, I have!" nodded little Eve Edgarton. 

"No, you haven't!" snapped her father. 

"Yes, I have!" insisted Eve. 

Tighter and tighter their arms clasped round each other. "You're allI've got, " faltered the man brokenly. 

"You're all I've ever had, " whispered little Eve Edgarton. 

Silently for a moment each according to his thoughts sat staring offinto far places. Then without any warning whatsoever, the man reachedout suddenly and tipped his daughter's face up abruptly into thelight. 

"Eve!" he demanded. "Surely you're not blaming me any in your heartbecause I want to see you safely married and settled with--with JohnEllbertson?"

Vaguely, like a child repeating a dimly understood lesson, little EveEdgarton repeated the phrases after him. "Oh, no, Father, " she said, "I surely am not blaming you--in my heart--for wanting to see memarried and settled with--John Ellbertson. Good old John Ellbertson, "she corrected painstakingly. 

With his hand still holding her little chin like a vise, the man'seyes narrowed to his further probing. "Eve, " he frowned, "I'm not aswell as I used to be! I've got pains in my arms! And they're not goodpains! I shall live to be a thousand! But I--I might not! It'sa--rotten world, Eve, " he brooded, "and quite unnecessarilycrowded--it seems to me--with essentially rotten people. Toward thestarving and the crippled and the hideously distorted, the world, having no envy of them, shows always an amazing mercy; and Beauty, whatever its sorrows, can always retreat to the thick protecting wallof its own conceit. But as for the rest of us?" he grinned with asudden convulsive twist of the eyebrow, "God help the undulyprosperous--and the merely plain! From the former--always, Envy, likea wolf, shall tear down every fresh talent, every fresh treasure, theylift to their aching backs. And from the latter--Brutal Neglect shallravage away even the charm that they thought they had!

"It's a--a rotten world, Eve, I tell you, " he began all over again, abit plaintively. "A rotten world! And the pains in my arms, I tellyou, are not--nice! Distinctly not nice! Sometimes, Eve, you think I'mmaking faces at you! But, believe me, it isn't faces that I'm making!It's my--heart that I'm making at you! And believe me, the pain isnot--nice!"

Before the sudden wince in his daughter's eyes he reverted instantlyto an air of semi-jocosity. "So, under all existing circumstances, little girl, " he hastened to affirm, "you can hardly blame a crustyold codger of a father for preferring to leave his daughter in thehands of a man whom he positively knows to be good, than in the handsof some casual stranger who, just in a negative way, he merely can'tprove isn't good? Oh, Eve--Eve, " he pleaded sharply, "you'll be somuch better off--out of the world! You've got infinitely too muchmoney and infinitely too little--self-conceit--to be happy here! Theywould break your heart in a year! But at Nunko-Nono!" he criedeagerly. "Oh, Eve! Think of the peace of it! Just white beach, and ablue sea, and the long, low, endless horizon. And John will make you agarden! And women--I have often heard--are very happy in a garden!And--"

Slowly little Eve Edgarton lifted her eyes again to his. "Has John gota beard?" she asked. 

"Why--why, I'm sure I don't remember, " stammered her father. "Why, yes, I think so--why, yes, indeed--I dare say!"

"Is it a grayish beard?" asked little Eve Edgarton. 

"Why--why, yes--I shouldn't wonder, " admitted her father. 

"And reddish?" persisted little Eve Edgarton. "And longish? As longas--?" Illustratively with her hands she stretched to her full arm'slength. 

"Yes, I think perhaps it is reddish, " conceded her father. "But why?"

"Oh--nothing, " mused little Eve Edgarton. "Only sometimes at night Idream about you and me landing at Nunko-Nono. And John in a great big, long, reddish-gray beard always comes crunching down at full speedacross the hermit-crabs to meet us. And always just before he reachesus, he--he trips on his beard--and falls headlong into the ocean--andis--drowned. "

"Why--what an awful dream!" deprecated her father. 

"Awful?" queried little Eve Edgarton. "Ha! It makes me--laugh. All thesame, " she affirmed definitely, "good old John Ellbertson will have tohave his beard cut. " Quizzically for an instant she stared off intospace, then quite abruptly she gave a quick, funny little sniff. "Anyway, I'll have a garden, won't I?" she said. "And always, ofcourse, there will be--Henrietta. "

"Henrietta?" frowned her father. 

"My daughter!" explained little Eve Edgarton with dignity. 

"Your daughter?" snapped Edgarton. 

"Oh, of course there may be several, " conceded little Eve Edgarton. "But Henrietta, I'm almost positive, will be the best one!"

So jerkily she thrust her slender throat forward with the speech, herwhole facial expression seemed suddenly to have undercut and stunnedher father's. 

"Always, Father, " she attested grimly, "with your horrid old books andspecimens you have crowded my dolls out of my steamer trunk. But neveronce--" her tightening lips hastened to assure him, "have you eversucceeded in crowding--Henrietta--and the others out of my mind!"

Quite incongruously, then, with a soft little hand in which therelurked no animosity whatsoever, she reached up suddenly and smoothedthe astonishment out of her father's mouth-lines. 

"After all, Father, " she asked, "now that we're really talking sointimately, after all--there isn't so specially much to life anyway, is there, except just the satisfaction of making the complete round ofhuman experience--once for yourself--and then once again--to showanother person? Just that double chance, Father, of getting twooriginal glimpses at happiness? One through your own eyes, andone--just a little bit dimmer--through the eyes of another?"

With mercilessly appraising vision the starving Youth that was in herglared up at the satiate Age in him. 

"You've had your complete round of human experience, Father!" shecried. "Your first--full--untrammeled glimpse of all your Heart'sDesires. More of a glimpse, perhaps, than most people get. From yourtiniest boyhood, Father, everything just as you wanted it! Just thetutors you chose in just the subjects you chose! Everything then thatAmerican colleges could give you! Everything later that Europeanuniversities could offer you! And then Travel! And more Travel! Andmore! And more! And then--Love! And then Fame! 'Love, Fame, and FarLands!' Yes, that's it exactly! Everything just as you chose it! Soyour only tragedy, Father, lies--as far as I can see--in justlittle--me! Because I don't happen to like the things that you like, the things that you already have had the first full joy ofliking, --you've got to miss altogether your dimmer, second-handglimpse of happiness! Oh, I'm sorry, Father! Truly I am! Already Isense the hurt of these latter years--the shattered expectations, theincessant disappointments! You who have stared unblinkingly into theface of the sun, robbed in your twilight of even a candle-flame. But, Father?"

Grimly, despairingly, but with unfaltering persistence--Youth fightingwith its last gasp for the rights of its Youth--she lifted her haggardlittle face to his. "But, Father!--my tragedy lies in the fact--thatat thirty--I've never yet had even my first-hand glimpse of happiness!And now apparently, unless I'm willing to relinquish all hope of everhaving it, and consent to 'settle down, ' as you call it, with 'goodold John Ellbertson'--I'll never even get a gamble--probably--atsighting Happiness second-hand through another person's eyes!"

"Oh, but Eve!" protested her father. Nervously he jumped up and beganto pace the room. One side of his face was quite grotesquelydistorted, and his lean fingers, thrust precipitously into hispockets, were digging frenziedly into their own palms. "Oh, but Eve!"he reiterated sharply, "you will be happy with John! I know you will!John is a--John is a--Underneath all that slowness, that ponderousslowness--that--that--Underneath that--"

"That longish--reddish--grayish beard?" interpolated little EveEdgarton. 

Glaringly for an instant the old eyes and the young eyes challengedeach other, and then the dark eyes retreated suddenly before--not thestrength but the weakness of their opponents. 

"Oh, very well, Father, " assented little Eve Edgarton. "Only--"ruggedly the soft little chin thrust itself forth into stubbornoutline again. "Only, Father, " she articulated with inordinatedistinctness, "you might just as well understand here and now, Iwon't budge one inch toward Nunko-Nono--not one single solitary littleinch toward Nunko-Nono--unless at London, or Lisbon, or Odessa, orsomewhere, you let me fill up all the trunks I want to--with justplain pretties--to take to Nunko-Nono! It isn't exactly, you know, like a bride moving fifty miles out from town somewhere, " sheexplained painstakingly. "When a bride goes out to a place likeNunko-Nono, it isn't enough, you understand, that she takes just thethings she needs. What she's got to take, you see, is everything underthe sun--that she ever may need!"

With a little soft sigh of finality she sank back into her pillows, and then struggled up for one brief instant again to add a postscript, as it were, to her ultimatum. "If my day is over--without ever havingbeen begun, " she said, "why, it's over--without ever having beenbegun! And that's all there is to it! But when it comes to Henrietta, "she mused, "Henrietta's going to have five-inch hair-ribbons--andeverything else--from the very start!"

"Eh?" frowned Edgarton, and started for the door. 

"And oh, Father!" called Eve, just as his hand touched the door-knob. "There's something I want to ask you for Henrietta's sake. It's rathera delicate question, but after I'm married I suppose I shall have tosave all my delicate questions to--ask John; and John, somehow, hasnever seemed to me particularly canny about anything except--geology. Father!" she asked, "just what is it--that you consider soparticularly obnoxious in--in--young men? Is it their sins?"

"Sins!" jerked her father. "Bah! It's their traits!"

"So?" questioned little Eve Edgarton from her pillows. "So? Suchas--what?"

"Such as the pursuit of woman!" snapped her father. "The love--not ofwoman, but of the pursuit of woman! On all sides you see it to-day! Onall sides you hear it--sense it--suffer it! The young man's eternallyjocose sexual appraisement of woman! 'Is she young? Is she pretty?'And always, eternally, 'Is there any one younger? Is there any oneprettier?' Sins, you ask?" Suddenly now he seemed perfectly willing, even anxious, to linger and talk. "A sin is nothing, oftener than not, but a mere accidental, non-considered act! A yellow streak quite asexterior as the scorch of a sunbeam. And there is no sin existent thata man may not repent of! And there is no honest repentance, Eve, thata wise woman cannot make over into a basic foundation for happiness!But a trait? A congenital tendency? A yellow streak bred in the bone?Why, Eve! If a man loves, I tell you, not woman, but the pursuit ofwoman? So that--wherever he wins--he wastes again? So that indeed atlast, he wins only to waste? Moving eternally--on--on--on from oneravaged lure to another? Eve! Would I deliver over you--your mother'sreincarnated body--to--to such as that?"

"O--h, " said little Eve Edgarton. Her eyes were quite wide withhorror. "How careful I shall have to be with Henrietta. "

"Eh?" snapped her father. 

Ting-a-ling--ling--ling--ling! trilled the telephone from the fartherside of the room. 

Impatiently Edgarton came back and lifted the receiver from its hook. "Hello?" he growled. "Who? What? Eh?"

With quite unnecessary vehemence he rammed the palm of his handagainst the mouth-piece and glared back over his shoulder at hisdaughter. "It's that--that Barton!" he said. "The impudence of him! Hewants to know if you are receiving visitors to-day! He wants to knowif he can come up! The--"

"Yes--isn't it--awful?" stammered little Eve Edgarton. 

Imperiously her father turned back to the telephone. Ting-a-ling--ling--ling--ling, chirped the bell right in his face. Asif he were fairly trying to bite the transmitter, he thrust his lipsand teeth into the mouth-piece. 

"My daughter, " he enunciated with extreme distinctness, "is feelingquite exhausted--exhausted--this afternoon. We appreciate, of courseMr. Barton, your--What? Hello there!" he interrupted himself sharply. "Mr. Barton? Barton? Now what in the deuce?" he called backappealingly toward the bed. "Why, he's rung off! The fool!" Quiteaccidentally then his glance lighted on his daughter. "Why, what areyou smoothing your hair for?" he called out accusingly. 

"Oh, just to put it on, " acknowledged little Eve Edgarton. 

"But what in creation are you putting on your coat for?" he demandedtartly. 

"Oh, just to smooth it, " acknowledged little Eve Edgarton. 

With a sniff of disgust Edgarton turned on his heel and strode offinto his own room. 

For five minutes by the little traveling-clock, she heard him pacingmonotonously up and down--up and down. Then very softly at last shesummoned him back to her. 

"Father, " she whispered, "I think there's some one knocking at theoutside door. "

"What?" called Edgarton. Incredulously he came back through hisdaughter's room and, crossing over to the hall door, yanked it openabruptly on the intruder. 

"Why--good afternoon!" grinned Barton above the extravagantly largeand languorous bunch of pale lavender orchids that he clutched in hishand. 

"Good afternoon!" said Edgarton without enthusiasm. 

"Er--orchids!" persisted Barton still grinningly. Across theunfriendly hunch of the older man's shoulder he caught a disquietingglimpse of a girl's unduly speculative eyes. In sudden impulsiveleague with her against this, their apparent common enemy, Age, hethrust the orchids into the older man's astonished hands. 

"For me?" questioned Edgarton icily. 

"Why, yes--certainly!" beamed Barton. "Orchids, you know! Hothouseorchids!" he explained painstakingly. 

"So I--judged, " admitted Edgarton. With extreme distaste he began tountie the soft flimsy lavender ribbon that encompassed them. "In theirnative state, you know, " he confided, "one very seldom finds themgrowing with--sashes on them. " From her nest of cushions across theroom little Eve Edgarton loomed up suddenly into definite prominence. 

"What did you bring me, Mr. Barton?" she asked. 

"Why, Eve!" cried her father. "Why, Eve, you astonish me! Why, I'msurprised at you! Why--what do you mean?"

The girl sagged back into her cushions. "Oh, Father, " she faltered, "don't you know--anything? That was just 'small talk. '"

With perfunctory courtesy Edgarton turned to young Barton. "Pray beseated, " he said; "take--take a chair. "

It was the chair closest to little Eve Edgarton that Barton took. "How do you do, Miss Edgarton?" he ventured. 

"How do you do, Mr. Barton?" said little Eve Edgarton. 

From the splashy wash-stand somewhere beyond them, they heard Edgartonfussing with the orchids and mumbling vague Latin imprecations--orendearments--over them. A trifle surreptitiously Barton smiled at Eve. A trifle surreptitiously Eve smiled back at Barton. 

In this perfectly amiable exchange of smiles the girl reached upsuddenly to the sides of her head. "Is my--is my bandage on straight?"she asked worriedly. 

"Why, no, " admitted Barton; "it ought not to be, ought it?"

Again for no special reason whatsoever they both smiled. 

"Oh, I say, " stammered Barton. "How you can dance!"

Across the girl's olive cheeks her heavy eyelashes shadowed down likea fringe of black ferns. "Yes--how I can dance, " she murmured almostinaudibly. 

"Why didn't you let anybody know?" demanded Barton. 

"Yes--why didn't I let anybody know?" repeated the girl in an utterpanic of bashfulness. 

"Oh, I say, " whispered Barton, "won't you even look at me?"

Mechanically the girl opened her eyes and stared at him fixedly untilhis own eyes fell. 

"Eve!" called her father sharply from the next room, "where increation is my data concerning North American orchids?"

"In my steamer-trunk, " began the girl. "On the left hand side. Tuckedin between your riding-boots and my best hat. "

"O--h, " called her father. 

Barton edged forward in his chair and touched the girl's brown, boyishlittle hand. 

"Really, Miss Eve, " he stammered, "I'm awfully sorry you got hurt!Truly I am! Truly it made me feel awfully squeamish! Really I've beenthinking a lot about you these last few days! Honestly I have! Neverin all my life did I ever carry any one as little and hurt as youwere! It sort of haunts me, I tell you. Isn't there something I coulddo for you?"

"Something you could do for me?" said little Eve Edgarton, staring. Then again the heavy lashes came shadowing down across her cheeks. 

"I haven't had any very great luck, " she said, "in finding you readyto do things for me. "

"What?" gasped Barton. 

The big eyes lifted and fell again. "There was the attic, " shewhispered a bit huskily. "You wouldn't rent me your attic!"

"Oh, but--I say!" grinned Barton. "Some real thing, I mean! Couldn'tI--couldn't I--read aloud to you?" he articulated quite distinctly, asEdgarton came rustling back into the room with his arms full ofpapers. 

"Read aloud?" gibed Edgarton across the top of his spectacles. "It's adaring man, in this unexpurgated day and generation, who offers toread aloud to a lady. "

"He might read me my geology notes, " suggested little Eve Edgartonblandly. 

"Your geology notes?" hooted her father. "What's this? Some more ofyour new-fangled 'small talk'? Your geology notes?" Still chucklingmirthlessly, he strode over to the big table by the window and, spreading out his orchid data over every conceivable inch of space, settled himself down serenely to compare one "flower of mystery" withanother. 

Furtively for a moment Barton sat studying the gaunt, graceful figure. Then quite impulsively he turned back to little Eve Edgarton'sscowling face. 

"Nevertheless, Miss Eve, " he grinned, "I should be perfectly delightedto read your geology notes to you. Where are they?"

"Here, " droned little Eve Edgarton, slapping listlessly at the loosepile of pages beside her. 

Conscientiously Barton reached out and gathered the flimsy papers intoone trim handful. "Where shall I begin?" he asked. 

"It doesn't matter, " murmured little Eve Edgarton. 

"What?" said Barton. Nervously he began to fumble through the pages. "Isn't there any beginning?" he demanded. 

"No, " moped little Eve Edgarton. 

"Nor any end?" he insisted. "Nor any middle?"

"N--o, " sighed little Eve Edgarton. 

Helplessly Barton plunged into the unhappy task before him. On pagenine there were perhaps the fewest blots. He decided to begin there. 

 "Paleontologically, "

the first sentence smote him--

 "Paleontologically the periods are characterized by absence of the large marine saurians, Dinosaurs and Pterosaurs--"

"eh?" gasped Barton. 

"Why, of course!" called Edgarton, a bit impatiently, from the window. 

Laboriously Barton went back and reread the phrase to himself. "Oh--oh, yes, " he conceded lamely. 

 "Paleontologically, "

he began all over again. "Oh, dear, no!" he interrupted himself. "Iwas farther along than that!--Absence of marine saurians? Oh, yes!

 "Absence of marine saurians, "

he resumed glibly, "Dinosaurs and Pterosaurs--so abundant in the--in the Cretaceous--of Ammonites and Belemnites, "

he persisted--heroically. Hesitatingly, stumblingly, without a glimmerof understanding, his bewildered mind worried on and on, its entiremental energy concentrated on the single purpose of trying topronounce the awful words. 

 "Of Rudistes, Inocerami--Tri--Trigonias, "

the horrible paragraph tortured on . . . 

 "By the marked reduction in the--Brachiopods compared with the now richly developed Gasteropods and--and sinupalliate--Lamellibranchs, "--

it writhed and twisted before his dizzy eyes. 

Every sentence was a struggle; more than one of the words he wasforced to spell aloud just out of sheer self-defense; and alwaysagainst Eve Edgarton's little intermittent nod of encouragement wasbalanced that hateful sniffing sound of surprise and contempt from theorchid table in the window. 

Despairingly he skipped a few lines to the next unfamiliar words thatmet his eye. 

 "The Neozoic flora, "

he read, "consists mainly of--of Angio--Angiosper--"

Still smiling, but distinctly wan around the edges of the smile, heslammed the handful of papers down on his knee. "If it really doesn'tmake any difference where we begin, Miss Eve, " he said, "for Heaven'ssake--let's begin somewhere else!"

"Oh--all right, " crooned little Eve Edgarton. 

Expeditiously Barton turned to another page, and another, andanother. Wryly he tasted strange sentence after strange sentence. Thensuddenly his whole wonderful face wreathed itself in smiles again. 

 "Three superfamilies of turtles, "

he began joyously. "Turtles! Ha!--I know turtles!" he proceeded withreal triumph. "Why, that's the first word I've recognized in allthis--this--er--this what I've been reading! Sure I know turtles!" hereiterated with increasing conviction. "Why, sure! Those--thoseslow-crawling, box-like affairs that--live in the mud and are used forsoup and--er--combs, " he continued blithely. 

"The--very--same, " nodded little Eve Edgarton soberly. 

"Oh--Lordy!" groaned her father from the window. 

"Oh, this is going to be lots better!" beamed Barton. "Now that I knowwhat it's all about--"

"For goodness' sake, " growled Edgarton from his table, "how do youpeople think I'm going to do any work with all this jabbering goingon!"

Hesitatingly for a moment Barton glanced back over his shoulder atEdgarton, and then turned round again to probe Eve's preferences inthe matter. As sluggishly determinate as two black turtles trailingalong a white sand beach, her great dark eyes in her little pale faceseemed headed suddenly toward some Far-Away Idea. 

"Oh--go right on reading, Mr. Barton, " nodded little Eve Edgarton. 

 "Three superfamilies of turtles, "

began Barton all over again. 

 "Three superfamilies of turtles--the--the Amphichelydia, the Cryptodira, and the Tri--the--Tri--the T-r-i-o-n-y-c-h-o-i-d-e-a, "

he spelled out laboriously. 

With a vicious jerk of his chair Edgarton snatched up his papers andhis orchids and started for the door. 

[Illustration: "You're nice, " he said. "I like you!"]

"When you people get all through this nonsense, " he announced, "maybe you'll be kind enough to let me know! I shall be in thewriting-room!" With satirical courtesy he bowed first to Eve, then toBarton, dallied an instant on the threshold to repeat both bows, andwent out, slamming the door behind him. 

"A nervous man, isn't he?" suggested Barton. 

Gravely little Eve Edgarton considered the thought. "Trionychoidea, "she prompted quite irrelevantly. 

"Oh, yes--of course, " conceded Barton. "But do you mind if I smoke?"

"No, I don't mind if you smoke, " singsonged the girl. 

With a palpable sigh of relief Barton lighted a cigarette. "You'renice, " he said. "I like you!" Conscientiously then he resumed hisreading. 

 "No--Pleurodira--have yet been found, "

he began. 

"Yes--isn't that too bad?" sighed little Eve Edgarton. 

"It doesn't matter personally to me, " admitted Barton. Hastily hemoved on to the next sentence. 

 "The Amphichelydia--are known there by only the genus Baena, "

he read. 

 "Two described species: B. Undata and B. Arenosa, to which was added B. Hebraica and B. Ponderosa--"

Petulantly he slammed the whole handful of papers to the floor. 

"Eve!" he stammered. "I can't stand it! I tell you--I just can't standit! Take my attic if you want to! Or my cellar! Or my garage! Oranything else of mine in the world that you have any fancy for! Butfor Heaven's sake--"

With extraordinarily dilated eyes Eve Edgarton stared out at him fromher white pillows. 

"Why--why, if it makes you feel like that--just to read it, " shereproached him mournfully, "how do you suppose it makes me feel tohave to write it? All you have to do--is to read it, " she said. "ButI? I have to write it!"

"But--why do you have to write it?" gasped Barton. 

Languidly her heavy lashes shadowed down across her cheeks again. "It's for the British consul at Nunko-Nono, " she said. "It's somenotes he asked me to make for him in London this last spring. "

"But for mercy's sake--do you like to write things like that?"insisted Barton. 

"Oh, no, " drawled little Eve Edgarton. "But of course--if I marryhim, " she confided without the slightest flicker of emotion, "it'swhat I'll have to write--all the rest of my life. "

"But--" stammered Barton. "For mercy's sake, do you want to marryhim?" he asked quite bluntly. 

"Oh, no, " drawled little Eve Edgarton. 

Impatiently Barton threw away his half-smoked cigarette and lighted afresh one. "Then why?" he demanded. 

"Oh, it's something Father invented, " said little Eve Edgarton. 

Altogether emphatically Barton pushed back his chair. "Well, I callit a shame!" he said. "For a nice live little girl like you to bepacked off like so much baggage--to marry some great gray-beardedclout who hasn't got an idea in his head except--except--"squintingly he stared down at the scattered sheets on thefloor--"except--'Amphichelydia, '" he asserted with some feeling. 

"Yes--isn't it?" sighed little Eve Edgarton. 

"For Heaven's sake!" said Barton. "Where is Nunko-Nono?"

"Nunko-Nono?" whispered little Eve Edgarton. "Where is it? Why, it'san island! In an ocean, you know! Rather a hot--green island! Inrather a hot--blue-green ocean! Lots of green palms, you know, andrank, rough, green grass--and green bugs--and green butterflies--andgreen snakes. And a great crawling, crunching collar of white sand andhermit-crabs all around it. And then just a long, unbroken line ofturquoise-colored waves. And then more turquoise-colored waves. Andthen more turquoise-colored waves. And then more turquoise-coloredwaves. And then--and then--"

"And then what?" worried Barton. 

With a vaguely astonished lift of the eyebrows little Eve Edgarton metboth question and questioner perfectly squarely. "Why--then--moreturquoise-colored waves, of course, " chanted little Eve Edgarton. 

"It sounds rotten to me, " confided Barton. 

"It is, " said little Eve Edgarton. "And, oh, I forgot to tell you:John Ellbertson is--sort of green, too. Geologists are apt to be, don't you think so?"

"I never saw one, " admitted Barton without shame. 

"If you'd like me to, " said Eve, "I'll show you how theturquoise-colored waves sound--when they strike the hermit-crabs. "

"Do!" urged Barton. 

Listlessly the girl pushed back into her pillows, slid down a littlefarther into her blankets, and closed her eyes. 

"Mmmmmmmmm, " she began, "Mmm-mmmmmmm--Mmmmm--Mmmmmmm, W-h-i-s-h-h-h!Mmmmmmmmm--Mmmmmmmm--Mmmmmmmm--Mmmmmm--W-h-i-s-h-h-h!--Mmmmmmmm--Mmmmmmm--"

"After a while, of course, I think you might stop, " suggested Barton abit creepishly. 

Again the big eyes opened at him with distinct surprise. "Why--why?"said Eve Edgarton. "It--never stops!"

"Oh, I say, " frowned Barton, "I do feel awfully badly about your goingaway off to a place like that to live! Really!" he stammered. 

"We're going--Thursday, " said little Eve Edgarton. 

"THURSDAY?" cried Barton. For some inexplainable reason the whole ideastruck him suddenly as offensive, distinctly offensive, as if Fate, the impatient waiter, had snatched away a yet untasted plate. "Why--why, Eve!" he protested, "why, we're only just beginning to getacquainted. "

"Yes, I know it, " mused little Eve Edgarton. 

"Why--if we'd have had half a chance--" began Barton, and then didn'tknow at all how to finish it. "Why, you're so plucky--and so odd--andso interesting!" he began all over again. "Oh, of course, I'm an awfulduffer and all that! But if we'd had half a chance, I say, you and Iwould have been great pals in another fortnight!"

"Even so, " murmured little Eve Edgarton, "there are yet--fifty-twohours before I go. "

"What are fifty-two hours?" laughed Barton. 

Listlessly like a wilting flower little Eve Edgarton slid down atrifle farther into her pillows. "If you'd have an early supper, " shewhispered, "and then come right up here afterward, why, there would betwo or three hours. And then to-morrow if you got up quite early, there would be a long, long morning, and--we--could getacquainted--some, " she insisted. 

"Why, Eve!" said Barton, "do you really mean that you would like tobe friends with me?"

"Yes--I do, " nodded the crown of the white-bandaged head. 

"But I'm so stupid, " confided Barton, with astonishing humility. "Allthese botany things--and geology--and--"

"Yes, I know it, " mumbled little Eve Edgarton. "That's what makes youso restful. "

"What?" queried Barton a bit sharply. Then very absent-mindedly for amoment he sat staring off into space through a gray, pungent haze ofcigarette smoke. 

"Eve, " he ventured at last. 

"What?" mumbled little Eve Edgarton. 

"Nothing, " said Barton. 

"Mr. Jim Barton, " ventured Eve. 

"What?" asked Barton. 

"Nothing, " mumbled little Eve Edgarton. 

Out of some emotional or purely social tensities of life it seemsrather that Time strikes the clock than that anything so small as aclock should dare strike the Time. One--two--three--four--five! wincedthe poor little frightened traveling-clock on the mantelpiece. 

Then quite abruptly little Eve Edgarton emerged from her cozycushions, sitting bolt upright like a doughty little warrior. 

"Mr. Jim Barton!" said little Eve Edgarton. "If I stayed here twoweeks longer--I know you'd like me! I know it! I just know it!"Quizzically for an instant, as if to accumulate further courage, shecocked her little head on one side and stared blankly into Barton'sastonished eyes. "But you see I'm not going to be here two weeks!" sheresumed hurriedly. Again the little head cocked appealingly to oneside. "You--you wouldn't be willing to take my word for it, would you?And like me--now?"

"Why--why, what do you mean?" stammered Barton. 

"What do I mean?" quizzed little Eve Edgarton. "Why, I mean--that justonce before I go off to Nunko-Nono--I'd like to be--attractive!"

"Attractive?" stammered Barton helplessly. 

With all the desperate, indomitable frankness of a child, the girl'schin thrust itself forward. 

"I could be attractive!" she said. "I could! I know I could! If I'dever let go just the teeniest--tiniest bit--I could have--beaux!" sheasserted triumphantly. "A thousand beaux!" she added more explicitly. "Only--"

"Only what?" laughed Barton. 

"Only one doesn't let go, " said little Eve Edgarton. 

"Why not?" persisted Barton. 

"Why, you just--couldn't--with strangers, " said little Eve Edgarton. "That's the bewitchment of it. "

"The bewitchment?" puzzled Barton. 

Nervously the girl crossed her hands in her lap. She suddenly didn'tlook like a doughty little soldier any more, but just like a worriedlittle girl. 

"Did you ever read any fairy stories?" she asked with apparentirrelevance. 

"Why, of course, " said Barton. "Millions of them when I was a kid. "

"I read one--once, " said little Eve Edgarton. "It was about a person, a sleeping person, a lady, I mean, who couldn't wake up until a princekissed her. Well, that was all right, of course, " conceded little EveEdgarton, "because, of course, any prince would have been willing tokiss the lady just as a mere matter of accommodation. But suppose, "fretted little Eve Edgarton, "suppose the bewitchment also ran that noprince would kiss the lady until she had waked up? Now there!" saidlittle Eve Edgarton, "is a situation that I should call completelystalled. "

"But what's all this got to do with you?" grinned Barton. 

"Nothing at all to do with me!" said little Eve Edgarton. "It is me!That's just exactly the way I'm fixed. I can't be attractive--outloud--until some one likes me! But no one, of course, will ever likeme until I am already attractive--out loud! So that's why I wondered, "she said, "if just as a mere matter of accommodation, you wouldn't bewilling to be friends with me now? So that for at least the fifty-twohours that remain, I could be released--from my most unhappyenchantment. "

Astonishingly across that frank, perfectly outspoken little face, thefrightened eyelashes came flickering suddenly down. "Because, "whispered little Eve Edgarton, "because--you see--I happen to like youalready. "

"Oh, fine!" smiled Barton. "Fine! Fine! Fi--" Abruptly the word brokein his throat. "What?" he cried. His hand--the steadiest hand amongall his chums--began to shake like an aspen. "WHAT?" he cried. Hisheart, the steadiest heart among all his chums, began to pitch andlurch in his breast. "Why, Eve! Eve!" he stammered. "You don't meanyou like me--like that?"

"Yes--I do, " nodded the little white-capped head. There was muchshyness of flesh in the statement, but not a flicker of spiritualself-consciousness or fear. 

"But--Eve!" protested Barton. Already he felt the goose-flesh risingon his arms. Once before a girl had told him that she--liked him. Inthe middle of a silly summer flirtation it had been, and the scene hadbeen mawkish, awful, a mess of tears and kisses and endlessrecriminations. But this girl? Before the utter simplicity of thisgirl's statement, the unruffled dignity, the mere acknowledgment, asit were, of an interesting historical fact, all his trifling, preconceived ideas went tumbling down before his eyes like a flimsyhouse of cards. Pang after pang of regret for the girl, of regret forhimself, went surging hotly through him. "Oh, but--Eve!" he began allover again. His voice was raw with misery. 

"Why, there's nothing to make a fuss about, " drawled little EveEdgarton. "You've probably liked a thousand people, but I--yousee?--I've never had the fun of liking--any one--before!"

"Fun?" tortured Barton. "Yes, that's just it! If you'd ever had thefun of liking anything it wouldn't seem half so brutal--now!"

"Brutal?" mused little Eve Edgarton. "Oh, really, Mr. Jim Barton, Iassure you, " she said, "there's nothing brutal at all in myliking--for you. "

With a gasp of despair Barton stumbled across the rug to the bed, andwith a shaky hand thrust under Eve Edgarton's chin, turned her littleface bluntly up to him to tell her--how proud he felt, but--to tellher how sorry he was, but--

[Illustration: "Any time that you people want me, " suggestedEdgarton's icy voice, "I am standing here--in about the middle of thefloor!"]

And as he turned that little face up tohis, --inconceivably--incomprehensively--to his utter consternation androut--he saw that it was a stranger's little face that he held. Gonewas the sullen frown, the indifferent glance, the bitter smile, and inthat sudden, amazing, wild, sweet transfiguration of brow, eyes, mouth, that met his astonished eyes, he felt his whole mean, supercilious world slip out from under his feet! And just asprecipitously, just as inexplainably, as ten days before he had seen aGreat Light that had knocked all consciousness out of him, heexperienced now a second Great Light that knocked him back into thefirst full consciousness that he had ever known!

"Why, Eve!" he stammered. "Why, you--mischief! Why, you little--cheekydarling! Why, my own--darned little Story Book Girl!" And gathered herinto his arms. 

From the farther side of the room the sound of a creaking board smotealmost instantly upon their ears. 

"Any time that you people want me, " suggested Edgarton's icy voice, "Iam standing here--in about the middle of the floor!"

With a jerk of dismay Barton wheeled around to face him. But it waslittle Eve Edgarton herself who found her tongue first. 

"Oh, Father dear--I have been perfectly wise!" she hastened to assurehim. "Almost at once, Father, I told him that I liked him, so that ifhe really were the dreadful kind of young man you were warning meabout, he would eliminate himself from my horizon--immediately--in hiswicked pursuit of--some other lady! Oh, he did run, Father!" sheconfessed in the first red blush of her life. "Oh, he did--run, Father, but it was--almost directly--toward me!"

"Eh?" snapped Edgarton. 

Then in a divine effrontery, half impudence and half humility, Bartonstepped out into the middle of the room, and proffered his strong, firm young hand to the older man. 

"You told me, " he grinned, "to rummage around until I discovered aReal Treasure? Well, I didn't have to do it! It was the Treasure, itseems, who discovered me!"

Then suddenly into his fine young eyes flared up the first glint ofhis new-born soul. 

"Your daughter, sir, " said Barton, "is the most beautiful woman in theworld! As you suggested to me, I have found out what she is interestedin--She is interested in--ME!"