gment
Day.

Again Valiant claimed Katharine and they glided off on _The Beautiful
Blue Danube_. Her paleness now had a tinge of color but nevertheless he
thought she drooped. "You are tired," he said, "shan't we sit it out?"

"Oh, do you mind?" she responded gratefully. "It _has_ been a fairly
strenuous day, hasn't it!"

He guided her to a corridor, where branches of rhododendron screened an
alcove of settees and seductive cushions. Here, her weariness seemed put
to rout. There was no drooping of fringed lids, no disconcerting
silences; she chatted with ease and piquancy.

"It's like a fairy tale," she said at length dreamily,--"this wonderful
life. To step into it from New York is like coming out of a hot-house
into the spring out-of-doors! It makes our city existence seem so
sordidly artificial. You have chosen right."

"I know it. And yet two months ago a life a hundred miles from the
avenue would have seemed a sad and sandy Sahara. I know better now."

"I have been listening to paeans all the evening," she said. "And you
deserve them. It's a fine big thing you are attempting--the restoring of
this old estate. And I know you have even bigger plans, too."

He nodded, suddenly serious and thoughtful. "There's a lot I'd like to
do. It's not only the house and grounds. There are ... other things. For
instance, back on the mountain--on my own land--is a settlement they
call Hell's-Half-Acre. Probably it has well earned the name. It's a
wretched collection of hovels and surly men and drabs of women and
unkempt children, the poorest of poor-whites. Not one of them can read
or write, and they live like animals. If I'm ever able, I mean to put a
manual-training school up there. And then--"

He ended with a half laugh, suddenly conscious that he was talking in a
language she would scarcely understand--in fact, in a tongue new to
himself. But there was no smile on her lips and her extraordinary
eyes--cool gray, shot through with emerald--were looking into his with a
frankness and sympathy he would not have guessed lay beneath her glacial
placidity.

To Katharine, indeed, it made little difference what philanthropic fads
the man she had chosen might affect as regarded his tenantry. Ambitions
like these had a manorial flavor that did not displease her. And the
Fargo millions would bear much harmless hammering. A change, subtle and
incommunicable, passed over her.

"I shall think of you," she sighed, "as working on in