Ellery stood with his arm around his wife's waist and looked about with

a quizzical expression that made her ask, "What are you thinking?"

"I was remembering."

"And pray what business have you, sir, to live in anything but the

present?"

"Perhaps I get more from to-day because I don't forget yesterday. When I

first came to St. Etienne, sweetheart, Dick took me to his home. You

know, with your mere mind, but you can not appreciate, how unrelated my

life had been. You can't imagine how hungrily I looked at that restful

room and at Dick's mother. I felt as though I would give anything--my

soul--to have a home. And now, behold, I have one."

"And you had to pledge your soul to me to get it."

"True. I paid dearly," he said. "But I was wondering how it was that you

had managed to put so much atmosphere into so untried a place. It looks

to me as impossible as a miracle. Here are some new walls, and new

furniture and new curtains and new vases and new pictures. Even the

books are mostly new. I always resented new books. They are like green

fruit. A book isn't ripe until it begins to be frayed around the edges.

It would seem to me a hopeless job to make a home out of all this raw

material. Yet this room already reminds me of Mrs. Percival's library,

Madeline, and it isn't only because it is a long room with a big

fireplace."

"I think it is a good beginning," she answered. "Now all we have to do

is to live in it."

"You talk as though 'living' were a very easy matter," he remonstrated.

"I think it must be the hardest thing in the world, judging by the

failures. I know heaps of people who are drifting, or grubbing, or

wallowing, or stumbling, or racing, but only a handful that are living.

The thought of it made me blue all the way home."

"Dick?" Madeline asked with ready intuition.

"Yes, Dick. He voted with the combine and against the reform element in

last night's council meeting; and he did it on some one's compulsion. I

can't tell you how it has stirred and disheartened me."

"Have you seen him?"

"Yes."

"What did he say?"

"That he could not explain."

"Then," said his wife decisively, "it is some of Lena's doings. About

anything else--anything--he would have told you, Ellery."

"Very likely, though it is hard to see how Mrs. Percival could be mixed

up in affairs like this."

Madeline was moving about restlessly.

"Ellery," she said at last, "I feel as though you and I had to be a sort

of pair of god-parents to Dick. He is so dear, so lovable, so fine--and

so unable to go alone. You, particularly, dearest, are the stanchest

thing he has. I know just how he feels about you, for I feel so, too.

You are going to push behind him and understand him and back up all his

resolves, aren't you, even if he does half disappoint you? You aren't

going to let anything alienate you or come between your friendship and

his, are you? I know you love him, and I'm sure he needs you."




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