g too much, she only whispered,--

"Got the tickets, Lochinvar?"

On the last day, when the house was partly closed and the servants
lingered only for an hour or two, Electra, ready to her gloves, came to
kiss her grandmother good-by. Madam Fulton drew back a pace and looked
at her.

"Electra," said she, "you'll be horribly shocked and you'll want to
laugh at me. But don't you do it. Don't you do either of those two
things."

Electra's brows came together in a perplexity that yet betokened only a
tepid interest. Her own affairs were too insistent. They crowded out the
pale, dim hopes of age.

"When, grandmother?" she asked. "Why should I want to laugh?"

"Never mind. But you will. And when you do, you say to yourself that,
after all, youth and age are just about the same, only age has tested
many things and found they're no good. So if it finds something that
seems good--well, Electra, you're off on your fool's errand. Don't you
deny other folks the comfort of theirs."

"I don't understand you, grandmother."

"No, of course you don't. But you will. Once I shouldn't have cared
whether you did or not, but I've taken a kind of a liking to you. I told
you I should when you turned human and made a fool of yourself like the
rest of us. And now you're going out into the wilderness, to found a
city or something of that sort."

"I am going to help the Brotherhood," said Electra, with punctilious
truth.

"And build a monument to that handsome scamp that had the bad taste to
come over here to die."

"Grandmother, you must not use such words."

"Must not? Don't you suppose I know a scamp when I see one? If I'd been
fifty years younger, I dare say I should be starting out to build him a
monument, too. But I'm glad of it, child, I'm glad of it. He's your
preserver. He has roused in you the capacity for being a fool. Make much
of it. Prize it. It's God's most blessed gift to man. When you've lost
that, you've lost everything."

"There is the carriage, grandmother. I must go."

Madam Fulton presented a kindly cheek.

"Good-by, my dear," she said. "I'm sorry I've harried you. I had to,
though. I should again. Now we'll meet in Paris, or London--or another
world."

Electra, a perfect picture of the well-equipped traveler, in her
beautiful suit, her erect pose, was at the door.

"The maids will go in an hour," she said. "Then you've only to turn the
key and walk over to Mrs. Grant's. I wish you'd had your trunks tak