lover. It made,
for Ellen, a better thing of life if somebody could have him.

Peter went back after a while with that thought to the florist's and
bought chrysanthemums, taking care to ask for the same kind Mr. Lessing
had just ordered. He was feeling quite cheerful even, as he ran up the
steps with them a few minutes later, and saw the square of light under
the half-drawn curtain, and heard the tap of Ellen's crutch coming to
meet him.

That night after he had gone to bed a very singular thing happened. The
Princess out of the picture visited him. It was there at the foot of his
bed in a new frame where Ellen had hung it--the young knight riding down
the old, lumpy dragon, but with an air that Peter hadn't for a long time
been able to manage for himself, doing a great thing easily the way one
knew perfectly great things couldn't. The assistant sales manager of
Siegel Brothers had been lying staring up at it for some time when the
Princess spoke to him. He knew it was she, though there was no face nor
form that he could remember in his waking hours, except that it was
familiar.

"Ellen is right," she told him; "it doesn't really matter so long as
somebody finds me."

"But what have _I_ done?" Peter was sore with a sense of personal
slight. "It wasn't in the story that there should be a whole crop of
dragons."

"All dragons are made so that where one head comes off there are seven
in its place; and you must remember if somebody didn't go about slaying
them, I couldn't be at all." This as she said it had a deep meaning for
Peter that afterward escaped him. "And you can hold the dream. It takes
a lot of dreaming to bring one like me to pass."

"I'm sick of dreams," said Peter. "A man dies after a little who is fed
on nothing else."

"They die quicker if they stop dreaming; on those that have the gift for
it the business of dreaming falls. Listen! How many that you know have
found me?"

"A great many think they have; it comes to the same thing."

"The same for them; but you must see that I can never really _be_ until
I am for those outside the dream. The trouble with you is that you'd
wake up after a while and you would _know_."

"Yes," Peter admitted, "I should know."

"Well, then," she was oh, so gentle about it, "yours is the better part.
If you can't have me, at least you're not stopping me by leaving off for
something else. In the dream I can live and grow, and you can grow to
me. Do you remember what h