as if MacLeod had wrought some spell upon
them. By the time they reached the liquid greenness of the arbor light,
Peter was sure he loved her. He could turn to her quite passionately.

"Electra," he said, holding both her hands now, "I've missed you all
these days."

She smiled a little and that, with her glowing color, made her splendid.

"You have been here every day," she said, conceding him the grace of
having done his utmost.

"Yes, but it hasn't been right. There's been something between
us--something unexplained."

She knew, so she reflected, what that was. Rose had been between them.
But she listened with an attentive gravity.

"We must go back to Paris," Peter was urging. "I shall work there. We
will live simply and turn in everything to the Brotherhood. We must be
married--dear." He looked direct and manly, not boyish, now, and she
felt a sudden pride in him. "Electra, you'll go with me?"

She withdrew from him and sat down, indicating the other chair.

"Something very queer has happened," she said. "I must tell you about
it." It had just come to her again as it had been doing at moments
through the absorbing hour at luncheon, that she was in a difficult
place with grandmother, and that here was the one creature whom she had
the right to count upon. Rapidly she told him the facts of the case,
ending with her conclusion,--

"The house belongs to grandmother."

Peter was frowning comically. In his effort to think, he looked as if
the sun were in his eyes.

"I don't believe I understand," he said, and again she told him.

"You don't mean you are building all this on a casual sentence in a
book?" He frowned the harder.

Electra was breathing pleasure at the beauty of the case.

"It is not a casual sentence," she insisted. "It's an extract from a
letter."

Peter had no intimate acquaintance with the business of the world, but
he knew its elements. He regarded her with tenderness, as a woman
attractively ignorant of harsh details.

"But Electra, dear, that isn't legal. It doesn't have the slightest
bearing on what you should give or what she could exact from you--if she
were that kind."

"No," she said, "it isn't legal. But it is--ethical." She used the large
word with a sense of safety, loving the sound of it and conscious that
Peter would not choke her off.

"But it isn't that. You don't know how your grandfather wrote that
letter. He may have done it in a fit of temper, or malice, or
carel