came, he put in his spare hours studying hard, making sketches--he had a
pretty knack for that and might have become a third-rate painter--of the
numberless ideas that floated to him out of tobacco clouds or down from a
moonlit sky or across a music-filled room. Sometimes he would tear the
sketches to bits. But sometimes, lingering lovingly over one, he would
know a deep thrill.

"Why, this," he would exclaim, "this is good. Oh!" hugging himself,
"they'll have to come to me yet."

On the strength of this conclusion he would allow himself some special
extravagance.

When he was twenty-seven he was making about nine hundred a year,
spending it all as it came, and owed more than five hundred dollars.

Then he met Shirley Lord.

It was at a dinner given by the Jim Blaisdells, whose guest she was.
Mrs. Jim introduced them.

"Shirley dear, this is our Davy Quentin. As a special favor--to each of
you--I'm putting you together to-night. You have just a minute now to
get acquainted." And Mrs. Jim fluttered away.

David spent most of that minute looking with a thrill--much the sort he
felt when he was pleased with his sketches--into a pair of blue eyes that
smiled at him out of the prettiest, sweetest, kindest face he thought he
had ever seen. And it was very pretty and sweet and kind just then, as
she looked at him with the friendliness he always inspired. Framing the
face was a lot of wavy brown hair with golden lights dancing in it, her
neck and shoulders were slender but softly rounded, the figure hinted at
by the soft clinging gown was trim and girlish. But those were details
that he drank in later.

He heaved a sigh, so patently one of content with his lot that she
laughed outright. To laugh well is a gift from the gods.

"You're not a bit as I thought you would be."

"How did you think I should be?" stammered David, trying to grasp the
fact that this dainty creature had been thinking of him at all.

"Why, grim and haughty and altogether overwhelming. You know, you're
supposed to be rather wonderful."

David felt anxiously for his head.

"Does it expand so easily?"

"I just wanted to be sure it was still there. I can see it would be easy
to lose it."

She laughed again.

It is probable that they talked a polite amount with their respective
neighbors. But if so, they regarded it as untimely interruption of the
real business of the evening. It was amazing the number of things they
found to