ing to a bank of pretty faces, but thinking his own thought,
in growing bitterness: "They who live blameless lives are the fools of
fate. If I had it to do over again, I would take what I wanted in spite
of everything, and let the consequences fall where they would!" Looking
up, he met in the eyes the woman of his early love.

She was holding court, for a person of such consequence became the
centre of the caravansary from the instant of her arrival; and she gave
him her hand with the conventional frankness and self-command that
set her apart from the weak. Once more he knew she was a woman to be
worshipped, whose presence rebuked the baseness he had just thought.

"Perhaps it was she who kept me from being worse," Maurice recognized in
a flash; "not I myself!"

"Why, Mrs. Carstang, I didn't know you were here!" he spoke, with warmth
around the heart.

"We came at noon."

"And I was in the woods all day." Maurice greeted the red-cheeked,
elderly Mr. Carstang, whom, according to half the world, his wife doted
upon, and according to the other half, she simply endured. At any rate,
he looked pleased with his lot.

While Maurice stood talking with Mrs. Carstang, the new grief and
the old strangely neutralized each other. It was as if they met and
grappled, and he had numb peace. The woman of his first love made him
proud of that early bond. She was more than she had been then. But Lily
moved past him with a smile. Her dancing was visible music. It had
a penetrating grace--hers, and no other person's in the world. The
floating of a slim nymph down a forest avenue, now separating from her
partner, and now joining him at caprice, it rushed through Maurice like
some recollection of the Golden Age, when he had stood imprisoned in a
tree. There was little opportunity to do anything but watch her, for she
was more in demand than any other girl in the casino. Hop nights were
her unconscious ovations. He took a kind of aching delight in her
dancing. For while it gratified an artist to the core, it separated her
from her lover and gave her to other men.

Next morning he waited for her in the study with a restlessness which
would not let him sit still. More than once he went as far as the
oak-tree to watch for a glimmer. But when Lily finally appeared at the
door he pretended to be very busy with papers on his desk, and looked
up, saying, "Oh!"

The morning was chill, and she seemed a fair Russian in fur-edged cloth
as she p