uriosity? A live one?"

She nodded. "The kind of curiosity that plays a flute."

He began his descent of the steps, not replying until he stood with her
upon the sidewalk before her carriage. "I might have put up with a
poet," he remarked with his foreign shrug, "but I'm compelled to draw
the line before a piper."

"Well, I thought you would," confessed Gerty, "or I shouldn't have
suggested it."

"It seems, by the way, to be a family that runs to talent," he laughed,
while she paused a moment before entering her carriage.

"I don't know that Uncle Percival is exactly a person of talent," she
observed, "he plays very badly, I believe. Can't I drop you somewhere?
Do let me."

He shook his head with a quizzical humour. "To tell the truth horses
make me nervous," he returned. "I'm afraid of them--You never know what
intentions they have in mind. No, I'll walk, thank you." His gaze was
on her and she saw his eyes flash with admiration of her beauty.

"Oh, your dreadful, soulless automobiles!" she exclaimed, with disgust.
"By the way, Laura hates them--she says they have the devil's energy
without his intellect."

He laughed indifferently. "Does she? I'll teach her better."

Gerty looked back to protest as she stepped into her carriage. "But
you'll never have a chance," she said.

"I'll make one," he persisted, gayly.

From the midst of her fur rugs she leaned out with a provoking little
laugh, while he watched her green eyes narrow in an arch and fascinating
merriment. "What would you say if I told you she was at home all the
time?" she asked. Then before he could remonstrate or reply, she rolled
off leaving him transfixed and questioning upon the sidewalk.

Was Laura Wilde really at home? The suspicion piqued him into a
curiosity he could not satisfy, and because he could not satisfy it he
found himself dwelling with a reawakened interest upon the woman who had
avoided him. If she had in truth refused to receive his visit it could
mean only that she entertained a dislike for his presence, and for a
dislike so evident there must be surely some foundation either in fact
or in intuition. No woman, so far as he could remember--and so unusual
an occurence would not easily have slipped his memory--had ever begun
his acquaintance with a distinctly expressed aversion, and the very
strangeness of the experience was not without attraction for his eager
and dominant temperament. What a queer little oddity she was, he
th