restive haste in his acceptance of his present ovation.
Now, he turned his candid eyes full to Gerard's, baring his inmost need
to the one who always understood.

"I want my father," said Corrie Rose.

Very lovingly Gerard put his arm around the slim shoulders and drew his
master-driver to a tent behind the repair pit, there left him to enter
alone and went back to Flavia.

"I put twelve ham sandwiches and my will in the locker, there," he found
Rupert sweetly explaining to the young girl. "I guessed I'd have use for
one or the other by this time. And I guess I guessed right. Oh, no--I'll
be able to take my regular nourishment just the same, when we get back;
this won't count. I," he sent Gerard a glance of saturnine intelligence,
"I've got myself all tired out here lately trying to keep on disliking
Rose."

"Allan, have you thought that we are going home?" Flavia asked, lifting
her happy face to her lover, as he stood over her. "_Home_; papa and
Corrie, and you and I, who were so far apart."

"I have thought that you would put on that lace frock you wore the last
evening I saw you there, only this time you will come where I can touch
you. Shall I tell you what you looked like that night? You were a golden
rose in a sheath of snow, quite out of reach. And you played your dainty
music so calmly and smoothly, while I was on fire and seeing rose-color
as I listened to your father's stories. I was like poor Cyrano de
Bergerac: I had gazed so long at your sun-bright little head that when I
looked away my dazzled eyes still saw gold."

Her red mouth dimpled into soft mischief and daring.

"Shall I tell you what _I_ saw while I was playing, Allan? I watched you
under my eyelashes--this way--and I wondered whether anyone else ever
looked quite so nice even from behind, and, and what it would be like to
touch your crinkly hair with one's finger."

"Do it now!"

She declined with an eloquent gesture. Around their enclosure the vast
crowds were streaming back to New York, the course was filled from edge
to edge with a solid procession of homing automobiles of every type and
age. Amid noise and congestion and merriment, Long Island's guests were
trouping out.

But comparative quietness had descended upon the row of pits when, half
an hour later, Mr. Rose and Corrie strolled casually up to join the
other two members of the party.

"I don't know how long you propose to stay here," observed the senior,
tolerantly. "Leno