not know how, in all the
years, his wife had molded him.

When he had satisfied the crowd, Jimmie fought his way to where Elise
and Duncan and I stood together.

Elise was wrapped in a great cloak of silver brocade. There was a touch
of silver, too, in her hair. But she had never seemed to me so small, so
childish.

"Oh, Jimmie," she said, as he came up, "you've done it!"

"Yes"--he was flushed and laughing, his head held high--"you always said
I could do it. And I shall do it again. Did you hear them shout, Elise?"

"Yes."

"Jove! I feel like the old woman in the nursery rhyme, 'Alack-a-daisy,
do this be I?'" He was excited, eager, but it was not the old eagerness.
There was an avidity, a greediness.

She laid her hand on his arm. "You've earned a rest, dearest. Let's go
up in the hills."

"In the hills? Oh, we're too old, Elise."

"We'll grow young."

"To-night I've given youth to the world. That's enough for me"--the
light in his eyes was not for her--"that's enough for me. We'll hang
around New York for a week or two, and then we'll go back to Albemarle.
I want to get to work on another play. It's a great game, Elise. It's a
great game!"

She knew then what she had done. Here was a monster of her own making.
She had sacrificed her lover on the altar of success. Jimmie needed her
no longer.

I would not have you think this an unhappy ending. Elise has all that
she had asked, and Jimmie, with fame for a mistress, is no longer an
unwilling captive in the old house. The prisoner loves his prison,
welcomes his chains.

But Duncan and I talk at times of the young Jimmie who came years ago
into our office. The Jimmie Harding who works down in Albemarle, and who
struts a little in New York when he makes his speeches, is the ghost of
the boy we knew. But he loves us still.

THE HIDDEN LAND

The mystery of Nancy Greer's disappearance has never been explained. The
man she was to have married has married another woman. For a long time
he mourned Nancy. He has always held the theory that she was drowned
while bathing, and the rest of Nancy's world agrees with him. She had
left the house one morning for her usual swim. The fog was coming in,
and the last person to see her was a fisherman returning from his nets.
He had stopped and watched her flitting wraith-like through the mist. He
reported later that Nancy wore a gray bathing suit and cap and carried a
blue cloak.

"You are sure she carried a cl