long,
my sweetheart and comrade. Life is all too short to waste when it can be
happy."

"Are we wasting it?" she demanded; then she smiled at him and added:
"Thank you, for introducing me to the wonderful originality of being
natural. On the whole I don't think I hate you--much."

All that afternoon her eyes held a starry happiness and sometimes they
twinkled with a mischievous ripple.

Once she demanded, "Suppose Hamilton were to go broke tomorrow. Stony,
flat, hopelessly broke. Would you still want me?" And before he could
answer she broke into a merry peal of laughter. "Don't trouble to answer
that question," she commanded. "I already know--and I'm fairly
contented."

* * * * *

The Duke de Metuan had come and gone back--with his answer, and Paul,
too, had left Haverly Lodge. For Paul's return there were two reasons.
The music-room which Hamilton had built as a gift to his brother was
nearing completion, and the finishing touches demanded personal
supervision. As the heart of a high priest turns to his temple, so
turned Paul Burton's heart to this spot at this time. It was a temple,
but decidedly a pagan temple. Porphyry columns went up from a mosaic
floor to a richly encrusted ceiling, and in conception and detail it was
lavishly beautiful and perfect. Hamilton had conceived and planned the
structure with a very ferocity of tense interest: though to Hamilton a
music-room was in itself about as absorbing as a steam laundry.

In the undertaking he saw a monument to a dream and the fulfilment of a
promise that one ragged boy had made to another ragged boy standing by a
panel of broken fence. Hamilton had never forgotten that moment when
first his pent-up ambitions had broken into fiery utterance while his
little brother listened with eyes wide and wondering--yet full of faith.
Then he had promised Paul an organ in a cathedral of dreams, where the
imaginary self which was his greater self might find expression.

This was to be the worthy realization of that boast.

The second reason for the younger Burton's withdrawal from the house
party was the departure of Loraine Haswell.

Now, finding himself in town, he had accepted one of those invitations
which meant the acknowledgment of his lionizing in Fashion's world of
music. Paul had little in common with those struggling men whose passion
for violin or piano leads them through poverty and hunger in pursuit of
their bays. But to fa