Mary Burton stood motionless, almost rigid, but some heart-wave welled up until she felt physically weak yet spiritually stronger than she had ever felt. Her two hands clutched tautly at his shoulders and her eyes gazed into his. Slowly they widened until they had unmasked all their depths and shown what was in her heart. Then as the man's pulses leaped to the elation of what he read there, he heard her shaken whisper inviting him very softly, "Look at me--and answer for yourself. Do I hate you?"

With sudden self-recovery, as he sought to take her in his arms, she slipped aside and after a short space the same voice that had just now been tense rippled into whimsical laughter. "No," she commanded. "It mustn't become a habit." The laugh died and her words and pupils were grave once more. "Why should I lie to you, dear? It's no use trying. I'm absurdly mad about you--but I've doubted my power of really loving so long that we must both be content to put it to the test of time. It's too new to trust. I can't tell how much of it is my own heart and how much is your hypnotism."

"I have come a long way," he said quietly. "I have waited a long while.

I can wait longer, if that's the edict, but not as he waits who fears the issue. You are going to love me and marry me."

"I hope so. I pray so." Her answer was vibrantly eager. "I have longed vainly for a day that should make my heart leap beyond control. You brought the day--and if, between us, we can keep it--"

She broke off, and he took both her hands in both of his.

"You are going to marry me," he repeated. "Don't make me wait too long, my sweetheart and comrade. Life is all too short to waste when it can be happy."

"Are we wasting it?" she demanded; then she smiled at him and added: "Thank you, for introducing me to the wonderful originality of being natural. On the whole I don't think I hate you--much."

All that afternoon her eyes held a starry happiness and sometimes they twinkled with a mischievous ripple.

Once she demanded, "Suppose Hamilton were to go broke tomorrow. Stony, flat, hopelessly broke. Would you still want me?" And before he could answer she broke into a merry peal of laughter. "Don't trouble to answer that question," she commanded. "I already know--and I'm fairly contented."

The Duke de Metuan had come and gone back--with his answer, and Paul, too, had left Haverly Lodge. For Paul's return there were two reasons.

The music-room which Hamilton had built as a gift to his brother was nearing completion, and the finishing touches demanded personal supervision. As the heart of a high priest turns to his temple, so turned Paul Burton's heart to this spot at this time. It was a temple, but decidedly a pagan temple. Porphyry columns went up from a mosaic floor to a richly encrusted ceiling, and in conception and detail it was lavishly beautiful and perfect. Hamilton had conceived and planned the structure with a very ferocity of tense interest: though to Hamilton a music-room was in itself about as absorbing as a steam laundry.

In the undertaking he saw a monument to a dream and the fulfilment of a promise that one ragged boy had made to another ragged boy standing by a panel of broken fence. Hamilton had never forgotten that moment when first his pent-up ambitions had broken into fiery utterance while his little brother listened with eyes wide and wondering--yet full of faith.

Then he had promised Paul an organ in a cathedral of dreams, where the imaginary self which was his greater self might find expression.

This was to be the worthy realization of that boast.

The second reason for the younger Burton's withdrawal from the house party was the departure of Loraine Haswell.

Now, finding himself in town, he had accepted one of those invitations which meant the acknowledgment of his lionizing in Fashion's world of music. Paul had little in common with those struggling men whose passion for violin or piano leads them through poverty and hunger in pursuit of their bays. But to face and stir with his art's hypnosis an audience of the smartest men and women in town, was meat and drink to his soul--was his soul's vanity. Of all his vanities it was the least weak--because the most sincere.

To see faces awaken from ennui and kindle into attentiveness, then soulfulness as he swayed them with the touch of his fingers on the keys was no mean triumph. To draw men out of lolling ease into tense and unconsidered attitudes; to cause women's lips to part and their pupils to grow misty as he carried them with him,

"Through the meadows of the sunset, through the poppies and the wheat, To the land where the dead dreams go"

--these were his delights. There are meaner pleasures.

But when he had played a little while, the composite pattern of faces always faded and darkened into a blur and he forgot them: forgot himself, forgot everything except the instrument that had become the mouthpiece of his soul. Then he, like his audience, was swept away into an impalpable world where nothing remained save the marvelous cascading and crushing tides which were the tides of golden sound. At such moments Paul Burton was almost a master.

This evening it was a benefit recital at the Plaza. He did not recall precisely to what worthy cause he was dedicating his gifted services, but that did not matter. He was bowing with a winning and boyish smile on his cameo features. Such fashionables as lingered in town so late as June were there to do homage; and other anonymous human units drawn from the millions followed where the fashionables led.

As Paul Burton looked out over the seated humanity, secretly searching for Loraine Haswell, he became conscious of another face near the front.

It was that of a woman, who seemed quite alone and who was simply dressed. Paul wondered why the features held his interest. It was not precisely a beautiful face, but in its gray-green eyes dwelt a distinctive quality and as some thought parted the lips in a smile there came a sudden flooding of light which was better than ordinary beauty.

This girl was frankly looking forward to the evening, for her expression mirrored that rapt anticipation which comes only to the eyes of the true music-lover. The small head under its brown hair was modeled as though a sculptor had spent loving care upon it, and Paul Burton thought that she was inwardly purring with the expectation of pleasure. A responsive glow at once awakened in him. He was subtly flattered because he recognized in that attitude of mind a tribute to his art for its own sake.

Then he began, and as the tide of his emotion swelled and lifted him out of himself, individual countenances grew misty--yet, for some reason this face stood out clear and single for a moment or two after the rest had faded.

Afterward he was told that even he had not played so well before.

As he turned from a congratulatory group when the recital was ended, one of the women whom he knew only by reason of her activity in arranging the entertainment, stopped him. "Mr. Burton," she said, "I want you to meet Miss Terroll." It was a general form of introduction and the man turned to bow--and recognized the face that had been the last to fade.

The girl gave him a small and well-gloved hand. She smiled, but said nothing, and her sponsor talked on rapidly.

"I was in the midst of a heated suffrage discussion when you began," she declared. "But of course it was forgotten--at once."

"I'm sorry," laughed Paul Burton, "if I broke up a good argument."

"Oh," she assured him with a prepared quotation, "'I can always leave off talking, when I hear a master play.'"

When Paul Burton reached the street most of the private motors had been summoned and dispatched by the starter. He stood for a little while looking up at the stars and breathing deeply the grateful night air. The moon-mist made a shadowy lacework of the trees in the park, and the dark contours of the avenue's mansions were silhouetted beyond the lights of the Savoy and Netherland. The expenditure of so much of his emotional self always left him strangely restless, and made him crave a brief aftermath of solitude. So he sent his car away and turned down the avenue.

But at Fifty-eighth street, under one of the light-clusters, he encountered a slender and solitary figure, and as he approached, he recognized the girl to whom he had so recently been introduced. The pianist had just been thinking of her, pondering why her face had stood out in the mist, when other faces had been swallowed, and why, although her eyes had confessed the delight of anticipation, she had later vouchsafed no word of commendation. Surely he had not played badly tonight and he was accustomed to ready praise. When the older woman who had presented him had spoken of him as a master he had laughed deprecatingly, but his eyes had gone half-questioningly to the girl, as if seeking corroboration there, and the girl had met them with only an impersonal and non-committal smile.

Paul had drunk enough of flattery to feel piqued at its withholding. Now to see the figure of her who had withheld appear there quite unaccompanied, as though rising in response to his meditations, almost startled him. She did not see him until he reached her side and lifted his hat; not even then, for she was looking across the avenue with something of absorption in her manner, until he spoke her name.

Even as he murmured, "Miss Terroll," the inflection of surprise remained in his voice. It was well after ten o'clock and in those circles of society where he was received the system of chaperonage was rigid enough to fail of understanding for the women who dared the streets at night unescorted. He knew ladies who went to their several rostrums to sound the clarion of sex equality and who went at night, but they did not go uncavaliered. And under the lights this slim figure, with its easy, almost boyish independence, seemed very young, almost childish.

She turned, at his greeting, and her eyes must have read his thoughts, for once more they smiled and in the smile was an amused twinkle. This time, though, it was also a smile of the lips, revealing a row of teeth so small and white that they accentuated her seeming of childishness.

She must be about twenty-two or twenty-three he thought.

"Mr. Burton," she laughed, "you spoke my name then almost as though I had astonished or startled you. I was scrutinizing the house across the way rather intently, but honestly there was no burglary in my thoughts."

"I'm rather sorry to hear that," he countered with a simulation of disappointment. "I've never burgled--and I had begun to hope you'd initiate me and let me share the adventure." She said nothing for a moment, and he bluntly demanded, "I was wondering what was in your thoughts just then."

Miss Terroll bent forward to look up the avenue before she answered. The 'buses were not running close together at this hour and the lamps of the nearest were still two blocks away.

"If I tell you, will you tell me why you spoke my name so chidingly?"

"It seems on its face a fair bargain." He spoke with a pretendedly grave consideration of the subject. Then added, "Yes, I will."

"I was thinking of music."

"What music?"

"Just music as music. Music as the one art which needs no background because every listening human being supplies one. That is where it succeeds where sculpture, for instance, fails. Music is a sort of panacea."

"Oh!" His monosyllable was a trifle disappointed. With such a cue she might at least have admitted his music into the summary.

The light from the overhead lamps fell in a circle of comparative radiance and he had time to note the charming modeling of her throat and a certain delicate nobility in the curve of her brow, where the soft hair merged with the dark shadowing of her hat brim.

"You haven't carried out your part of the contract yet," she reminded him. "I've told you what, but you haven't told me why."

"I mean to. Are you waiting for some one?"

"I am waiting for a 'bus to take me home."

"Where are you going to let it take you? Where is your home, I mean?"