been indulging--it's a positive
vice with you, Penny--and give me some tea."

Penelope laughed and began to pour out tea.

"I half thought Maryon Rooke might be here by now," remarked Nan,
selecting a scone from the golden-brown pyramid on the plate and
carefully avoiding Penelope's eyes. "He said he might look in some time
this afternoon."

Penelope held the teapot arrested in mid-air.

"How condescending of him!" she commented drily. "If he comes--then exit
Penelope."

"You're an ideal chaperon, Penny," murmured Nan with approval.

"Chaperons are superfluous women nowadays. And you and Maryon are so
nearly engaged that you wouldn't require one even if they weren't out of
date."

"Are we?" A queer look of uncertainty showed in Nan's eyes. One might
almost have said she was afraid.

"Aren't you?" Penelope's counter-question flashed back swiftly. "I
thought there was a perfectly definite understanding between you?"

"So you trot tactfully away when he comes? Nice of you, Penny."

"It's not in the least 'nice' of me," retorted the other. "I happen to
be giving a singing-lesson at half-past five, that's all." After a pause
she added tentatively: "Nan, why don't you take some pupils? It
means--hard cash."

"And endless patience!" commented Nan, "No, don't ask me that, Penny, as
you love me! I couldn't watch their silly fingers lumbering over the
piano."

"Well, why don't you take more concert work? You could get it if you
chose! You're simply throwing away your chances! How long is it since
you composed anything, I'd like to know?"

"Precisely five minutes--just now when I was in the kitchen. Listen, and
I'll play it to you. It's a setting to those words of old Omar:

'Ah, Love! could you and I with Fate conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits--and then
Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire!'

I was burning my fingers in the performance of duty and the
appropriateness of the words struck me," she added with a malicious
little grin.

She seated, herself at the piano and her slim, nervous hands wandered
soundlessly a moment above the keys. Then a wailing minor melody grew
beneath them--unsatisfied, asking, with now and then an ecstasy of joyous
chords that only died again into the querying despair of the original
theme. She broke off abruptly, humming the words beneath her breath.

Penelope crossed the room and, laying her ha