makes her what she is--I can't tell."

"One can't analyze her charm," said I, "except as you've just done
it--womanly sweetness and strength. Hepatica is--Hepatica. And being
that, we love her."

"We do," said he, half under his breath, and caught my hand and gave it
a grip which stung.

* * * * *

The next morning the Gay Lady came home. We had not expected her until
evening, and when we heard a light footstep approaching through the hall
as we sat at breakfast, we looked at one another in dumb astonishment
and disbelief. But the next instant she stood smiling at us from the
doorway.

She was glad to see us, too. From Lad's ecstatic embrace she came into
mine, and I heard her eager whisper--"I'm so glad to get back to _you!_"
The Skeptic and the Philosopher wrung her hand until I know her little
fingers ached, and they stared at her, the one like a brother, the other
like--well, she must have seen for herself. No, they were not rivals.
The Philosopher had seen the Skeptic's case, I think, from the first,
and being not only a philosopher but a man, and the Skeptic's best
friend, had never allowed himself to enter the race at all. I had
detected a wistful light in his eyes now and then, and had my own notion
of what might have happened if he had let it, but--there was only a very
warm brotherliness in the greeting he gave the Gay Lady, and she looked
back into his eyes too frankly for me to think he had ever let her see
anything else.

She sat down at the table with us for a little, while we finished, and
you should have seen the difference in the look of the room. It was
another place. She ran upstairs to her own room, and I followed her, and
from being a deserted bedroom with a lonely aspect it became a human
habitation with an atmosphere of home. She took off her travelling
dress, talking gayly to me all the while, and brushed her bright locks,
and put on one of the charming white frocks which her own hands had
made, and then came and held me tight, and laughed, and was very near
crying, and said there was never such another place as this.

"There certainly never is when you are in it, dear," I agreed, and
received such a reward for that as only the Gay Lady knows how to give.

All day she stayed by me, wherever I might be. The Skeptic watched and
waited--he got not the ghost of an opportunity. When I was upon the
porch with the others she was there--and not a minute after.