ing to call on
me--have I mentioned I've got a figure--a real sweet figure? That's
about what romance means to me."

"Youth, dear?" asks Miss Norton gently.

"That's it, dearie," answered the older woman dreamily. "Youth."

For a time those about the table sat in silence, picturing no doubt the
slender figure on the steps of that porch long ago. Not without a
humorous sort of pity did they glance occasionally toward the woman whom
Norton had begged to make happy. The professor of Comparative Literature
was the first to break the silence.

"The dictionary," he remarked academically, "would define romance as a
species of fictitious writing originally composed in the Romance
dialects, and afterward in prose. But--the dictionary is prosaic, it has
no soul. Shall I tell you what romance means to me? I will. I see a man
toiling in a dim laboratory, where there are strange fires and stranger
odors. Night and day he experiments, the love of his kind in his eyes, a
desire to help in his heart. And then--the golden moment--the great
moment in that quiet dreary cell--the moment of the discovery. A serum,
a formula--what not. He gives it to the world and a few of the sick are
well again, and a few of the sorrowful are glad. Romance means neither
youth nor power to me. It means--service."

He bent his dim old eyes on his food, and Mr. Magee gazed at him with a
new wonder. Odd sentiments these from an old man who robbed fireplaces,
held up hermits, and engaged in midnight conferences by the annex door.
More than ever Magee was baffled, enthralled, amused. Now Mr. Max leered
about the table and contributed his unsavory bit.

"Funny, ain't it," he remarked, "the different things the same word
means to a bunch of folks. Say romance to me, and I don't see no dim
laboratory. I don't see nothing dim. I see the brightest lights in the
world, and the best food, and somebody, maybe, dancing the latest freak
dance in between the tables. And an orchestra playing in the
distance--classy dames all about--a taxi clicking at the door. And me
sending word to the chauffeur 'Let her click till the milk carts
rumble--I can pay.' Say--that sure is romance to me."

"Mr. Hayden," remarked Magee, "are we to hear from you?"

Hayden hesitated, and looked for a moment into the black eyes of Myra
Thornhill.

"My idea has often been contradicted," he said, keeping his gaze on the
girl, "it may be again. But to me the greatest romance in the world is