The Lighted Match

"I thought--" she hesitated. "I thought you were on the other side."

The newcomer's laugh showed a glistening line of the whitest teeth under

a closely-cropped dark mustache.

"I have run away," he declared. "My honored father is, of course,

furious, but Europe was desolate--and so--" He shrugged his shoulders.

Then, noting Benton's half-amused, half-annoyed smile, he bowed and

saluted. "Ah, Benton," he said. "How are you? I see that your eyes

resent foreign invasion."

Benton raised his brows in simulated astonishment. "Are you still

foreign?" he inquired. "I thought perhaps you had taken out your first

citizenship papers."

"But you?" Pagratide turned to the girl with something of entreaty.

"Will you not give me your welcome?"

In the distance loomed the tile roofs and tall chimneys of "Idle Times."

Between stretched a level sweep of road.

"You didn't ask permission," she replied, with a touch of disquiet in

her pupils. "When a woman is asked to extend a welcome, she must be

given time to prepare it. I ran away from Europe, you know, and after

all you are a part of Europe."

She shook out her reins, bending forward over the roan's neck, and with

a clatter of gravel under their twelve hoofs, the horses burst forward

in a sudden neck and neck dash, toward the patch of red roofs set in a

mosaic of Autumn woods.