care what she thinks. Besides, it
behooves her to be agreeable, and she knows that I know it does!
_Voila_!

"By the way, I saw Mrs. Gerard's pretty ward at the theatre last
night--Miss Erroll. She certainly is stunning--"

Selwyn flattened out the letter and deliberately tore out the last
paragraph. Then he set it afire with a match.

"At least," he said with an ugly look, "I can keep _her_ out of this";
and he dropped the brittle blackened paper and set his heel on it. Then
he resumed his perusal of the mutilated letter, reread it, and finally
destroyed it.

"Alixe," he wrote in reply, "we had better stop this letter-writing
before somebody stops us. Anybody desiring to make mischief might
very easily misinterpret what we are doing. I, of course, could not
close the correspondence, so I ask you to do so without any fear
that you will fail to understand why I ask it. Will you?"

To which she replied:

"Yes, Phil. Good-bye.

"ALIXE."

A box of roses left her his debtor; she was too intelligent to
acknowledge them. Besides, matters were going better with her.

And that was all for a while.

Meanwhile Lent had gone, and with it the last soiled snow of winter. It
was an unusually early spring; tulips in Union Square appeared
coincident with crocus and snow-drop; high above the city's haze
wavering wedges of wild-fowl drifted toward the Canadas; a golden
perfumed bloom clotted the naked branches of the park shrubs; Japanese
quince burst into crimson splendour; tender chestnut leaves unfolded;
the willows along the Fifty-ninth Street wall waved banners of gilded
green; and through the sunshine battered butterflies floated, and the
wild bees reappeared, scrambling frantically, powdered to the thighs in
the pollen of a million dandelions.

"Spring, with that nameless fragrance in the air
Which breathes of all things fair,"

sang a young girl riding in the Park. And she smiled to herself as she
guided her mare through the flowering labyrinths. Other notes of the
Southern poet's haunting song stole soundless from her lips; for it was
only her heart that was singing there in the sun, while her silent,
smiling mouth mocked the rushing melody of the birds.

Behind her, powerfully mounted, ambled the belted groom; she was riding
alone in the golden weather because her good friend Selwyn was very busy
in his office downtown, and Gerald, who now rode wi