" cried John cordially, "you can have 'em. Here,
they're under the bed!"

A tall young man, incredibly thin and disheveled-looking, sidled into
the room, moving around Elizabeth in a circular course like a shying
horse. He stumbled over a chair, begged its pardon, floundered into
the adjoining bedroom, and dived under the bed. He reappeared with his
arms full of human bones, and shot across the room, muttering something
like thanks. As he fled down the dark hall, he collided with a piece
of furniture, his burden fell, and with a terrific clatter rolled from
the top of the stairs to the bottom. John rushed out to help gather up
the fallen, and Elizabeth ran across the room and hid her face
shudderingly in the folds of her cloak.

"What's the matter?" asked Charles Stuart, shaking with amusement. "If
you feel ill, I'll call old Bags back, Lizzie. He's a medical--in
John's year, and they all say he's going to be gold-medalist."

"U-g-h!" Elizabeth sat up and regarded the bedroom door with disgust.
"Human bones under the bed! Charles Stuart MacAllister, I do think
medical students are the most abominable----"

"It's a fact," he agreed cordially. "When a man borrows your bones I
think the limit is reached. It's bad enough when John borrows my ties
and my boots."

He was speaking absently, and Elizabeth looked at him. He was glancing
down at the magazine again, which was lying open on the table. She
went straight to the point. "Stuart, you don't like my little verses."

He started. "Why, I--what makes you think so? I think they are
beautiful--full of light and music and"--he paused.

"You looked disappointed when you finished," she persisted.

He was silent. "What was the reason?"

"I--I was looking for something I couldn't find," he said hesitatingly.

"What?"

"Its soul."

"Its soul?--'the light that never was on land or sea.' You are too
exacting. Only real poets do things like that. I'm not a genius."

"You don't need to be. But one must live a real life to write real
things," he said bluntly.

"And I don't," she said half-defiantly. She looked at him wonderingly,
at his broad shoulders and his grave face, feeling as though this was
the first time she had seen him. He seemed suddenly to be entirely
unlike the old Charles Stuart who had always been merely a sort of
appendage to John--a second John in fact, only not one-half so dear.
It came to her like a revelation that he was not at