find it easy to get on."

"I've enough for the present," she assured him, and the stimulus
of the champagne made her look--and feel--much more
self-confident than she really was. "More than I've ever had
before. So I'm not worried. When anyone has been through what I
have they aren't so scared about the future."

He looked the admiration he felt--and there was not a little of
the enthusiasm of the champagne both in the look and in the
admiration--"I see you've already learned to play the game
without losing your nerve."

"I begin to hope so," said she.

"Yes--you've got the signs of success in your face. Curious
about those signs. Once you learn to know them, you never miss
in sizing up people."

The dinner had come. Both were hungry, and it was as good a
dinner as the discussion about it between Spenser and the waiter
had forecast. As they ate the well-cooked, well-served food and
drank the delicately flavored champagne, mellow as the gorgeous
autumn its color suggested, there diffused through them an
extraordinary feeling of quiet intense happiness--happiness of
mind and body. Her face took on a new and finer beauty; into his
face came a tenderness that was most becoming to its rather
rugged features. And he had not talked with her long before he
discovered that he was facing not a child, not a child-woman, but
a woman grown, one who could understand and appreciate the
things men and women of experience say and do.

"I've always been expecting to hear from you every day since we
separated," he said--and he was honestly believing it now. "I've
had a feeling that you hadn't forgotten me. It didn't seem
possible I could feel so strongly unless there was real sympathy
between us."

"I came as soon as I could."

He reflected in silence a moment, then in a tone that made her
heart leap and her blood tingle, he said: "You say you're free?"

"Free as air. Only--I couldn't fly far."

He hesitated on an instinct of prudence, then ventured. "Far as
New York?"

"What is the railroad fare?"

"Oh, about twenty-five dollars--with sleeper."

"Yes--I can fly that far."

"Do you mean to say you've no ties of any kind?"

"None. Not one." Her eyes opened wide and her nostrils dilated. "Free!"

"You love it--don't you?"

"Don't you?"

"Above everything!" he exclaimed. "Only the free _live_."

She lifted her head higher in a graceful, attractive gesture of
confidence and happiness. "Well--I am