tar to the love god whom
they worshiped. They peopled it with many a merry company. They saw the
rich and the great in the dining-room. They pictured in this vision
pleasure capering through the ball room. They enshrined wisdom and
contentment in the library. In the great living-room they installed
elegance and luxury, and hospitality beckoned with ostentatious pride
for the coming of such of the nobility as Harvey and its environs and
the surrounding state and Nation could produce. A grand, proud temple, a
rich, beautiful temple, a strong, masterful temple would be this temple
of love.

"And, dearest," said he--the master of the house, as he held her in his
arms at the foot of the stairway that swept down into the broad hall
like the ghost of some baronial grandeur, "dearest, what do we care what
they say! We have built it for ourselves--just for you, I want it--just
for you; not friends, not children, not any one but you. This is to be
our temple of love."

She kissed him, and whined wordless assent. Then she whispered: "Just
you--you, you, and if man, woman or child come to mar our joy or to
lessen our love, God pity the intruder." And like a flaming torch she
fluttered in his arms.

The summer breeze came caressingly through an unclosed window into the
temple. It seemed--the summer breeze which fell upon their cheeks--like
the benediction of some pagan god; their god of love perhaps. For the
grand house, the rich house, the beautiful, masterful temple of their
mad love was made for summer breezes.

But when the rain came, and the storms fell and beat upon that house,
they found that it was a house built upon sand. But while it stood and
even when it fell there was a temple, a real temple, a temple made with
hands--a temple that all Harvey and all the world could understand!

CHAPTER XXVI

DR. NESBIT STARTS ON A LONG UPWARD BUT DEVIOUS JOURNEY

The Van Dorns opened their new house without ostentation the day after
their marriage in October. There was no reception; the handsomest hack
in town waited for them at the railway station, as they alighted from
the Limited from Chicago. They rode down Market Street, up the Avenue to
Elm Crest Place, drove to the new house, and that night it was lighted.
That was all the ceremony of housewarming which the place had. The Van
Dorns knew what the town thought of them. They made it plain what they
thought of the town. They allowed no second rate people to crowd int