ng a muscle of
his face nor changing his patient, tolerant expression. The best plan,
he knew, was to let all the steam out of the boiler and then gradually
rake the fires.

"My dear little woman,"' he began, "to tell you the truth, I never laid
eyes on Morton; didn't want to, in fact. All that was an excuse to get
away. I thought you wanted a rest, and I went away to let you have it.
Miss Billeton I haven't seen for three months, and couldn't if I would,
for she is engaged to her cousin and is now in Paris buying her wedding
clothes. I don't know who has been humbugging you, but they've done it
very badly. There is not one word of truth in what you've said from
beginning to end."

There is a certain ring in a truthful statement that overcomes all
doubts. Lucy felt this before Max had finished. She felt, too, with a
sudden thrill, that she still held him. Then there came the
instantaneous desire to wipe out all traces of the outburst and keep
his good-will.

"And you swear it?" she asked, her belief already asserting itself in
her tones, her voice falling to its old seductive pitch.

"On my honor as a man," he answered simply.

For a time she remained silent, her mind working behind her mask of
eyes and lips, the setting sun slanting across the beach and lighting
up her face and hair, the grays splashing the suds with their impatient
feet. Max kept his gaze upon her. He saw that the outbreak was over and
that she was a little ashamed of her tirade. He saw, too, man of the
world as he was, that she was casting about in her mind for some way in
which she could regain for herself her old position without too much
humiliation.

"Don't say another word, little woman," he said in his kindest tone.
"You didn't mean a word of it; you haven't been well lately, and I
oughtn't to have left you. Tighten up your reins; we'll drive on if you
don't mind."

That night after the moon had set and the lights had been turned out
along the boardwalk and the upper and lower porticos and all Beach
Haven had turned in for the night, and Lucy had gone to her apartments,
and Mr. and Mrs. Coates and the rest of them, single and double, were
asleep, Max, who had been pacing up and down his dressing-room, stopped
suddenly before his mirror, and lifting the shade from the lamp, made a
critical examination of his face.

"Forty, and I look it!" he said, pinching his chin with his thumb and
forefinger, and turning his cheek so that the light