about it when they proposed to the girl they madly loved. I
was devilish put out, you know, that I had never tried it so I _could_
know.

From across the hall droned the voices from the smoking-room--Colonel
Kirkland and the judge debating something about treaty ports and the
Manchurian railway. Through the French windows from the open loggia came
the eager, pitched tones of the professor and the frump--no, Elizabeth,
I mean--discussing Aldeberan and Betelguese, dead suns, star clusters
and the nebular hypothesis.

Within the room Billings had snapped out the lights, to bring out the
blazing fire of his treasured ruby, and from the tray in the dark corner
where he was closing it in his collection vault, it gleamed like the end
of a bright cigar. The other four were absently clutched in my darling's
hand and the crimson shine gleamed bravely through her finger bars.
"Carbuncles--ancient carbuncles," the professor had called them, "that
the Chinese believed their dragons carried in their mouths, in their
black caves in days of old, to furnish light whereby they could see to
devour their victims." And _that_ I believed, for I could see some
practical sense about it!

"What _I_ should like to know," said the dear, precious cub, hugging his
knee by the mantel, "is where _I_ come in!"

"You don't come in," said Billings, lifting him playfully by the ear;
"you come _out_!" And out they went.

And my dear girl and I were like what's-his-name's picture--alone at
last, you know. She stirred softly and her sigh came like the wind
through the trees at night.

"I suppose we will have to burn them," she said dolefully; "the
professor says it is the only thing to do."

"Jolly shame, I say!" I murmured indignantly.

"It seems a crime," she said softly, and there was a little choke in her
voice. She slipped to the soft-fibered rug before the fire. I gently
brought my chair closer to her.

[Illustration]

For a moment she pressed her cheek against the crimson mass, then
kneeling forward, laid it gently on the glowing coals. There was a
flash, a lightning blaze of red that almost blinded us, and then for a
brief space a field of shining ash. Against this the tiny serpent frogs
writhed and twisted and turned at last to leaden gray. Over the spread
of all, swept wave after wave of golden, crimsoned pictures--temples and
pagodas--dragons that licked fiery tongues at us--strange faces that
came and went, leering hideously into o