power to bind almost any woman once drawn to his
personality; but Stephanie was too young and too poetic to be greatly
impaired by wealth and fame, and she was not yet sufficiently gripped
by the lure of him. She loved him in her strange way; but she was
interested also by the latest arrival, Forbes Gurney. This tall,
melancholy youth, with brown eyes and pale-brown hair, was very poor.
He hailed from southern Minnesota, and what between a penchant for
journalism, verse-writing, and some dramatic work, was somewhat
undecided as to his future. His present occupation was that of an
instalment collector for a furniture company, which set him free, as a
rule, at three o'clock in the afternoon. He was trying, in a mooning
way, to identify himself with the Chicago newspaper world, and was a
discovery of Gardner Knowles.

Stephanie had seen him about the rooms of the Garrick Players. She had
looked at his longish face with its aureole of soft, crinkly hair, his
fine wide mouth, deep-set eyes, and good nose, and had been touched by
an atmosphere of wistfulness, or, let us say, life-hunger. Gardner
Knowles brought a poem of his once, which he had borrowed from him, and
read it to the company, Stephanie, Ethel Tuckerman, Lane Cross, and
Irma Ottley assembled.

"Listen to this," Knowles had suddenly exclaimed, taking it out of his
pocket.

It concerned a garden of the moon with the fragrance of pale blossoms,
a mystic pool, some ancient figures of joy, a quavered Lucidian tune.

"With eerie flute and rhythmic thrum Of muted strings and beaten drum."

Stephanie Platow had sat silent, caught by a quality that was akin to
her own. She asked to see it, and read it in silence.

"I think it's charming," she said.

Thereafter she hovered in the vicinity of Forbes Gurney. Why, she
could scarcely say. It was not coquetry. She just drew near, talked
to him of stage work and her plays and her ambitions. She sketched him
as she had Cowperwood and others, and one day Cowperwood found three
studies of Forbes Gurney in her note-book idyllicly done, a note of
romantic feeling about them.

"Who is this?" he asked.

"Oh, he's a young poet who comes up to the Players--Forbes Gurney. He's
so charming; he's so pale and dreamy."

Cowperwood contemplated the sketches curiously. His eyes clouded.

"Another one of Stephanie's adherents," he commented, teasingly. "It's
a long procession I've joined. Gardner Knowles, Lane Cross, Blis