her. "I don't know whether you will
understand. But ever since I wrote that book I have felt that I must live
up to it. That I must be worthy of the thing I had written."

Richard, dancing in the music room with Anne, found himself saying, "How
different it all is."

"From Bower's?"

"Yes."

"Do you like it?"

"Sometimes. And then sometimes it all seems so big--and useless."

The music stopped, and they made their way back to the little
drawing-room.

"Won't you sit here and talk to me?" Richard said. "Somehow we never seem
to find time to talk."

She smiled. "There is always so much to do."

But she knew that it was not the things to be done which had kept her
from him. It was rather a sense that safety lay in seeing as little of
him as possible. And so, throughout the winter she had built about
herself barriers of reserve. Yet there had never been a moment when he
had dined with them, or when he had danced, or when he had shared their
box at the opera, that she had not been keenly conscious of his presence.

"And so you think it is all so big--and useless?" He picked up the
conversation where they had dropped it when the dance stopped.

She nodded. "A house like this isn't a home. I told Marie-Louise the
other day that a home was a place where there was a little fire, with
somebody on each side of it, and where there was a little table with two
people smiling across it, and with a pot boiling and a woman to stir it,
and with a light in the window and a man coming home."

"And what did Marie-Louise say to that?"

"She wrote a poem about it. A nice healthy sane little poem--not one of
those dreadful things about the ashes of dead women which I found her
doing when I came."

"How did you cure her?"

"I am giving her real things to think of. When she gets in a morbid mood
I whisk her off to the gardener's cottage, and we wash and dress the baby
and take him for an airing."

Richard gave a big laugh. "With your head in the stars, you have your
feet always firmly on the ground."

"I try to, but I like to know that there are always--stars."

"No one could be near you and not know that," he told her gravely.

It was a danger signal. She rose. "I have a feeling that you are
neglecting somebody. You haven't danced yet with Miss Chesley."

"Oh, Eve's all right," easily; "sit down."

But she would not. She sent him from her. His place was by Eve's side. He
was going to marry Eve.

* *