itherto he had known her only as his benefactress and the thoughtful
caretaker for his comfort. But now, at this first sight of her in the
broader social field, she shone upon and dazzled him. Admitting that the
later charm might be subtly sensuous--he refused to analyze it too
closely--it was undeniable that it warmed him to a newer and a stronger
life; that he could bask in its generous glow like some hibernating
thing of the wild answering to the first thrilling of the spring-tide.
True, Miss Grierson bore little resemblance to any ideal of his past
imaginings. She might even be the _Aspasia_ to Charlotte Farnham's
_Saint Cecilia_. But even so, was not the daughter of Axiochus well
beloved of men and of heroes?

It was some little time afterward, and Jasper Grierson, stalking like a
grim and rather unwilling master of ceremonies among his guests, had
gruffly introduced three or four of the men, when Griswold gladly made
room in the window-seat for his transformed and glorified mistress of
the fitnesses. As had happened more than once before, her nearness
intoxicated him; and while he made sure now that the charm was at least
partly physical, its appeal was none the less irresistible.

"Are you dreadfully tired?" she asked; adding quickly: "You mustn't let
us make a martyr of you. It's your privilege to disappear whenever you
feel like it."

"Indeed, I'm not at all tired," he protested. "It is all very comforting
and homelike; so vastly--" he hesitated, seeking thoughtfully for the
word which should convey his meaning without laying him open to the
charge of patronizing superciliousness, and she supplied it promptly.

"So different from what you were expecting; I know. You have been
thinking of us as barbarians--outer barbarians, perhaps--and you find
that we are only harmless provincials. But really, you know, we are
improving. I wish you could have known Wahaska as it used to be."

"Before you took it in hand?" he suggested. "I can imagine it."

"Can you? I don't have to imagine it--I can remember: how we used to sit
around the edges of the room behaving ourselves just as hard as ever we
could, and boring one another to extinction. I'm afraid some of them do
it yet, sometimes; but I won't let them do it here."

Once more Griswold let his gaze go at large through the stately rooms.
He understood now. His prefigurings had not been so wide of the mark,
after all. He had merely reckoned without his hostess.

"It