stepfather, who knew amazingly many great
persons, persuaded a famous artist to hear her when she gave her concert
in Los Angeles.

"Yes," she said, nodding her head, "it is a voice. It is a voice. A
little teaching, yes; this Barrett woman who was once my pupil, she will
be safe with her. Not too much; not too much singing. Finish your
school, my little one. Then you shall come over to me for a year, yes?
We shall see what we shall see!" She patted her cheek and sent her out
of the room ahead of Stephen.

"Well?" he wanted to know.

"But yes, a voice, as I have said. Send her to me when her schooling is
over."

"She has a future?"

The great contralto shrugged her thick shoulders. "I fear not. I think
not."

His face lengthened. "Why?"

"Because, my friend, she will care more for living. She will not care so
greatly to _get_, that large child. She will only _give_. She has not
the fine relentless selfishness to make the artist. Well, we shall see.
Life may break her. Send her to me. In two years, yes? No, no, I will
have no thanks. It is so small a thing to do.... One grows fat and old;
it is good to have youngness near. Now, go, my friend. I shall gargle my
throat and sleep." She gave him a hot, plump hand to kiss.

Honor was not especially impressed. She rather thought, when the time
came, she should prefer to go to Stanford, but she liked her music
lessons, meanwhile. It filled up her time, the business of singing, in
that last year when she was more or less marking time and helping Jimsy
through.

Her stepfather watched her with growing amazement. So far as any one
might judge, and to Mrs. Lorimer's tearful relief, Honor's attitude
toward the last of the "Wild Kings" was at seventeen what it had been at
twelve, at six.

"I was right, wasn't I?" Stephen wanted to know.

"Well ... if you can only keep on being right about it! I'm so thankful
about her singing. That year abroad will be wonderful. She'll meet new
people ... real men."

"Young Jimsy is exhibiting every known symptom of becoming a real man."

"Yes, but he's a King."

"That appears to be the universal opinion regarding him."

"Stephen _dear_, don't be ridiculous! You've always been as bewitched
about the boy as Honor herself." Mrs. Lorimer was dressed for a luncheon
and her husband, heavy-eyed and flushed of face, had cut short his late
morning sleep to drive her. She was still for him the everlasting Helen.

"Mildred," he said, qui