appened to Ada Harvey? I've saved you from
that at any rate."

"No," said Peter, "it was the dragon saved me. I thought you were she.
It's saved me from lots of things, now that I think of it."

"Ah, that's what we have to do between us, Peter, we have to save you.
You're worth saving."

"Save me for what?" Peter cried out to her and so strongly in his
loneliness that he found himself starting up from his bed with it. He
could see the dragon spitting flames as before, and the pale light from
the swinging street lamp gilding the frame of the picture. Though he
did not understand all that had happened to him, as he lay down again he
was more comforted than he had been at any time since he had made up his
mind that he was to be a bachelor.

PART FOUR

IN WHICH THE LOVELY
LADY MAKES A
FINAL APPEARANCE

PART FOUR

IN WHICH THE LOVELY LADY MAKES A
FINAL APPEARANCE

I

On the day that the silver-laced maple, then in fullest leaf, had passed
by the space of three delicate palm-shaped banners the sill of the
third-story office window, Lessing, of Weatheral, Lessing & Co., Brokers
in Real Estate, crossed over to his partner's desk before sitting down
at his own, and remained quietly leaning against it and looking out of
the window without a word. He remained there staring out over the new,
orderly growth of the suburb, toward the river, until the stenographer
from the outer room had come in with the vase which she had been filling
with great golden roses, and gone out again, after placing it carefully
in the exact middle of the top of the junior partner's desk. By that
time Lessing's rather plump, practical hand had crept out along the rim
of the desk until it was covered by Peter's lean one, and still neither
of them had said a word. The roses had come in from Lessing's country
place that morning in Lessing's car, and Lessing's wife had gathered
them. There were exactly seventeen, full-blown and fragrant, and one
small bud of promise which Peter presently removed from its vase to his
button hole. The act had almost the significance of a ritual, a thing
done many times with particular meaning.

"Somehow," Peter said as he fastened it with a pin underneath his lapel,
"seventeen years seems a shorter time to look back on than to look
forward to."

"Well, when we've put twenty-five years of work into it--and that's
nothing to what we'll get into the next seventeen." Lessing's tone keyed
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