dmitted, a query arose. Was Vincent Farley the man who,
giving her his best, could call out the best there was in her? It
annoyed her to admit the query, or rather the doubt which fathered it;
it distressed her when the doubt appeared to grow with the lengthening
leagues of distance.

Now vacillation was not a Dabney failing; and the aftermath of these
storm-tossed musings made for Vincent Farley's cause. Romance also, in
the eternal feminine, is a constant quantity, and if it be denied the
Romeo-and-Juliet form of expression, will find another. Vincent Farley,
as man or as lover, presented obstacles to any idealizing process, but
Ardea set herself resolutely to overcome them. Distance and time have
other potentialities besides the obliterative: they may breed halos.
When the French liner reached its New York slip, Ardea was remembering
only the studied kindnesses, the conventional refinements, the
correctnesses which, if they did seem artificial at times, were so many
guarantees of self-respect: when the Great Southwestern train had roared
around the cliffs of Lebanon with the returning exiles, and the
locomotive whistle was sounding for Gordonia, some other of the negative
virtues had become definitely positive, and the halo was beginning to be
distinctly visible.

How Tom Gordon had informed himself of the precise day and train of
their home-coming, Ardea did not think to inquire. But he was on the
platform when the train drew in, and was the first to welcome them.

She was quick to see and appreciate the changes wrought in him, by time,
by the Boston sojourn, by the summer's struggle with adverse men and
things--though of this last she knew nothing as yet. It seemed scarcely
credible that the big, handsome young fellow who was shaking hands with
her grandfather, helping Miss Euphrasia with her multifarious
belongings, and making himself generally useful and hospitable, could be
a later reincarnation of the abashed school-boy who had sweated through
the trying luncheon at Crestcliffe Inn.

"Not a word for me, Tom?" she said, when the last of Cousin Euphrasia's
treasures had been rescued from the impatient train porter and added to
the heap on the platform.

"All the words are for you--or they shall be presently," he laughed.
"Just let me get your luggage out of pawn and started Deer-Traceward,
and I'll talk you to a finish."

She stood by and looked on while he did it. Surely, he had grown and
matured in the t