e top of Olympus for all either knew
or cared for the rest of the world.

It was Alan, not Tony, who brought it to an end, however. He whispered
something in the girl's ear and their feet paused. In a moment he was
holding open the French window for her to pass out into the night. The
white and silver vanished like a cloud. Alan Massey followed. The window
swung shut again. The music stopped abruptly as if now its inspiration
had come to an end. A single note of a violin quivered off into silence
after the others, like the breath of beauty itself passing.

Carlotta and her aunt happened to be standing near each other. The girl's
eyes were troubled. She wished Alan had not come back at all from the
city. She hoped he really intended to go away to-morrow as he had told
her. More than all she hoped she was right in believing that Tony had
refused to marry him. Like Dick, Carlotta had reverence for the Holiday
tradition. She could not bear to think of Tony's marrying Alan. She felt
woefully responsible for having brought the two together.

"Did you say he was going to-morrow?" asked her aunt.

Carlotta nodded.

"He won't go," prophesied Miss Cressy.

"Oh, yes. I think he will. I don't know for certain but I have an idea
she refused him this morning."

"Ah, but that was this morning. Things look very different by star light.
That child ought not to be out there with him. She is losing her head."

"Aunt Lottie! Alan is a gentleman," demurred Carlotta.

Miss Lottie smiled satirically. Her smile repeated Ted Holiday's verdict
that some gentlemen were rotters.

"You forget, my dear, that I knew Alan Massey when you and Tony were in
short petticoats and pigtails. You can't trust too much to his
gentlemanliness."

"Of course, I know he isn't a saint," admitted Carlotta. "But you don't
understand. It is real with Alan this time. He really cares. It isn't
just--just the one thing."

"It is always the one thing with Alan Massey's kind. I know what I am
talking about, Carlotta. He was a little in love with me once. I dare say
we both thought it was different at the time. It wasn't. It was pretty
much the same thing. Don't cherish any romantic notions about love,
Carlotta. There isn't any love as you mean it."

"Oh yes, there is," denied Carlotta suddenly, a little fiercely.
"There is love, but most of us aren't--aren't worthy of it. It is too
big for us. That is why we get the cheap _little_ stuff. It is all we
are fit