up
several people, inviting them to dine with him that evening.

It was nearly ten o'clock now. He took his little gift, stopped a
taxi, and arrived at the big brick high-school just in time to enter
with the last straggling parents and family friends.

The hall was big and austerely bare, except for the ribbons and flags
and palms which decorated it. It was hot, too, though all the great
blank windows had been swung open wide.

The usual exercises had already begun; there were speeches from
Authority; prayers by Divinity; choral effects by graduating
pulchritude.

The class, attired in white, appeared to average much older than
Dulcie. He could see her now, in her reconstructed communion dress,
holding the big bouquet which he had sent her, one madonna lily of
which she had detached and pinned over her breast.

Her features were composed and delicately flushed; her bobbed hair was
tucked up, revealing the snowy neck.

One girl after another advanced and read or spoke, performing the
particular parlour trick assigned her in the customary and perfectly
unremarkable manner characteristic of such affairs.

Rapturous parental demonstrations greeted each effort; piano, violin
and harp filled in nobly. A slight haze of dust, incident to
pedalistic applause, invaded the place; there was an odour of flowers
in the heated atmosphere.

Glancing at a programme which he had found on his seat, Barres read:
"Song: Dulcie Soane."

Looking up at her where she sat on the stage, among her comrades in white,
he noticed that her eyes were busy searching the audience--possibly
for him, he thought, experiencing an oddly pleasant sensation at the
possibility.

* * * * *

The time at length arrived for Dulcie to do her parlour trick;
she rose and came forward, clasping the big, fragrant bouquet,
prettily flushed but self-possessed. The harp began a little minor
prelude--something Irish and not very modern. Then Dulcie's pure,
untrained voice stole winningly through the picked harp-strings'
hesitation:

"Heart of a colleen,
Where do you roam?
Heart of a colleen,
Far from your home?
Laden with love you stole from her breast!
Wandering dove, return to your nest!

Sodgers are sailin'
Away to the wars;
Ladies are wailin'
Their woe to the stars;
Why is the heart of you straying so soon--
Heart that was part of you, Eileen Aroon?

Lost to a sodger,