cottage--but of brick,
instead of the usual wood, and the slate roof descended at attractive
angles. The door she was facing was superior to the usual
flimsy-looking door. Indeed, she at once became conscious of a highly
attractive and most unexpected air of substantiality and good taste.
The people who lived here seemed to be permanent people--long resident,
and looking forward to long residence. She had never seen such
beautiful or such tastefully grouped sun flowers, and the dahlias and
marigolds were far above the familiar commonplace kitchen garden
flowers.

The door opened, and a handsome, extremely intelligent looking woman,
obviously Victor's sister, was looking pleasantly at her. Said she:
"I'm sorry to have kept you waiting. But I was busy in the kitchen.
This is Miss Hastings, isn't it?"

"Yes," said Jane, smiling friendlily.

"I've heard my brother and Selma talk of you." (Jane wondered WHAT
they had said.) "You wish to see Victor?"

"If I'd not be interrupting," said Jane.

"Come right in. He's used to being interrupted. They don't give him
five minutes to himself all day long--especially now that the
campaign's on. He always does his serious work very early in the
morning."

They went through a hall, pleasantly odorous of baking in which good
flour and good butter and good eggs were being manufactured into
something probably appetizing, certainly wholesome. Jane caught a
glimpse through open doors on either side of a neat and reposeful
little library-sitting room, a plain delightfully simple little
bedroom, a kitchen where everything shone. She arrived at the rear
door somehow depressed, bereft of the feeling of upper-class
superiority which had, perhaps unconsciously, possessed her as she came
toward the house. At the far end of an arbor on which the grape vines
were so trellised that their broad leaves cast a perfect shade, sat
Victor writing at a table under a tree. He was in his shirt sleeves,
and his shirt was open at the throat. His skin was smooth and
healthily white below the collar line. The forearms exposed by his
rolled up sleeves were strong but slender, and the faint fair hair upon
them suggested a man, but not an animal.

Never had she seen his face and head so fine. He was writing rapidly,
his body easily erect, his head and neck in a poise of grace and
strength. Jane grew pale and trembled--so much so that she was afraid
the keen, friendly eyes of Alice Sherrill w