onate love. Who
could foretell what its resurrection would be? Or when? Or where?

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

"Otto, how does it feel to be a celebrity?" Miss Gannion asked abruptly,
one afternoon in late May.

The young German smiled.

"How should I know?"

"From experience, of course. Your artistic probation appears to be over.
Your winning the prize for the suite has settled it for all time, and
now I am doing my best to readjust myself to the idea that my boy friend
Otto is the new composer Arlt about whom the critics are waging inky
war."

"What is the use?" he inquired, as he crossed the room and sat down at
the piano.

"Because I really must begin to face the fact that you are destined to
be one of the immortals, and treat you with proper respect." Her tone
was full of lazy amusement and content. "Hereafter, I shall never dare
tell you when your necktie is askew, and as for training you in the
management of your cuffs!" She paused expressively, and they both
laughed.

"It was a blow to me to find that reputation depends upon such things,"
Arlt said, after a thoughtful pause.

"Not reputation; success. The two things don't necessarily touch each
other. One is a matter of brains, the other of fashion." Her accent was
almost bitter. "You have deserved one; you are beginning to have the
other thrust upon you. How does it make you feel?"

"As if I owed a great deal to you."

The girlish pink flush rose in Miss Gannion's cheeks.

"Thank you, dear boy. But really I have done nothing."

Arlt turned his back to the piano and, clasping his hands over his
knees, spoke with simple gravity.

"Miss Gannion, here in America, I have had three good friends, Mr.
Thayer, you, and Miss Van Osdel. Everybody knows what Mr. Thayer has
done to help me; I am the only one who knows about you and Miss Van
Osdel, and I know it better and better, the more I learn to understand
your American ways. It was not always easy for a woman in society to
accept as her friend a stranger musician without reputation and without
social backing, to acknowledge him in public and to insist that her
friends should acknowledge him. At first I took it as a matter of
course. I know better now, and I know that you and Miss Van Osdel must
have given up some things for the sake of helping me along."

Miss Gannion paused, before she answered.

"Otto," she said at length; "I am a lonely woman, and my life has been
broader for knowing you. I mea