are getting me so _many_ meals," protested Maria Angelina,
confronted by a small table which he had spread for two before the
fireplace. Within the hearth he had kindled a small and cheerful blaze.

"I'll agree to keep it up as long as you eat them."

Swiftly Barry turned the browning ham from the iron spider into a small
platter and deposited it upon the table with a flourish. Then he placed
the granite coffeepot at her right hand.

"I made it with an egg," he said proudly. "Will you pour, Signorina,
while I cut this? That's genuine canned cream--none of your execrable
Continental hot milk for me! And I like my cream first with three lumps
of sugar, please."

He smiled blithely upon her as with a deep and delicious constraint her
small hands moved, housewifely, among his cups.

"These aren't French rolls," he murmured, "but I promise you that they
are cold enough for a true Italian breakfast, and there is honey and
there is jam--and here, Signorina, is ham, milk-fed, smoke-cured, and
browned to make the best chef of Sherry's pale with envy and despair.
. . . I thank you," and he accepted the cup of coffee from her hand with
another direct smile that deepened the confusion of the girl's spirit.

A dream had succeeded the nightmare, a fairy tale of a dream. It was
unreal . . . it was a bubble that would break . . . but it was a spell,
an enchantment.

She forgot that she was tired and bruised; she forgot her stained
clothes; she forgot her outrageous past and her terrifying future.

Oblivious and bewitched, she smiled across the table into Barry Elder's
eyes and poured his coffee and ate his bread and jam. The amazing youth
in her forgot for those moments all that it had suffered and all that it
must meet. She was floating, floating in the web of this beautiful
unreality.

And Barry Elder himself appeared a very different person from that
bitter young man who had stared desperately into the fire and talked
about cake and disillusionment. In spite of his lack of sleep there was
nothing in the least haggard about his young face; he looked remarkably
alert and interested in life, and his eyes were very gentle and his
smile very sweet.

Perhaps there was something of a dream to him in the presence of a
fairylike young creature who had blown in with the storm and slept upon
his sheltering hearth. Perhaps there was an enchantment to him in the
exquisite young face across the table, the shy, soft eyes, the delicate