y
dear girl, you could understudy the North Pole! However, it was my
mistake; I'm sorry. Shall we go in and dance?"

For the next half-hour he and Eleanor were the most observed couple on
the floor. The "ubiquitous youngsters," seeing his air of proprietorship,
forbore to break in, and it was not until the last dance that Pink
Bailey, looking the immature college boy he was, presented himself
apologetically to take Eleanor home.

"Bring your car around, and she will be ready," said Harold loftily. Then
he turned to Eleanor, "I shall expect a letter every day. You must keep
me posted how things are going."

They were standing on the club-house steps now, and she was looking
dreamily off across the golf links.

"Did you hear me?" he said impatiently.

"Oh, I was listening to the whip-poor-wills. They always take me back to
Valley Mead. Write every day? Heavens, no. I hate to write letters."

"But you'll write to me, you little ingrate! I shall send you such nice
letters that you'll have to answer them."

A vagrant breeze, with a hint of autumn, blew Eleanor's scarf across his
shoulder, and he tenderly replaced it about her throat.

"Are you cold?" he asked solicitously.

Eleanor, under cover of the crowd that was surging about them, felt a
sudden access of boldness.

"Not so cold as some people think," she said mischievously; then, without
waiting for further good-by, she sped down the steps and into the waiting
car.

CHAPTER 23

Of all the multitudinous ways in which Dan Cupid, Unlimited, does
business, none is more nefarious than his course by correspondence. Once
he has induced two guileless clients to plunge into the traffic of love
letters, the rest is easy. Wild speculation in love stock, false
valuations, hysterical desire to buy in the cheapest and sell in the
dearest market, invariably follow. Before the end of the month Harold
Phipps and Eleanor Bartlett were gambling in the love market with a
recklessness that would have staggered the most hardened old speculator.

Harold, instead of being handicapped by his absence at the most critical
point in his love affair, took advantage of it to exhibit one of his most
brilliant accomplishments. He sent Eleanor a handsome tooled-leather
portfolio to hold his letters, which he wrote on loose-leaf sheets and
mailed unfolded. They were letters that deserved preservation, prose
poems composed with infinite pains and copie