He turned suddenly and fumbled with his glasses. Yet at the same time he was surprised to notice how calm he felt. There she was, with some stranger. He had never seen her with pearls round her throat; the beauty of her shoulders impressed him for the first time. She was openly and unaffectedly eager, smiling at him, hurrying forward with outstretched hands.

"Douglas! Why, Douglas! When did you come?”

He found his throat dry, but finally managed to speak. "Only this afternoon. I'm so glad to see you, Mary." He realized that the orchestra had begun to play. "May I have this dance?" he continued, more easily. "Please don't say you have it taken.”

"If I did, I should give it to you anyway, I think. Thank you, Mr. Dawson. Mrs. Clair, forgive me for taking Douglas away, but I haven't seen him for nearly four years! Don't let's dance this; there's room over here where we can talk without every chaperone remarking it."

He followed her, as she chattered, into the comparative darkness of the little salon. The air was heavy with roses in tall, glass vases; the electric lights were shaded with pink. It seemed like a stage set, ready for a proposal scene.

"Here!" she announced, dropping into a wide, low chair under the most becoming lamp. "You may sit on that little, square-backed settee; bring it close, so we needn't shout. That's right. Now how are you?" And she let her head sink back until she watched him with drooping lids.

He realized that he had been staring, and recovered himself with a mental jerk. "I'm well," he answered, "and you? But I needn't ask, you're radiant! I've never seen you so-but we can't pay each other such dancing-school compliments now, can we?"

"Oh, let's! It's such fun. For my part, I may safely say that your mustache is brilliantly becoming. But I hardly recognized you at all! It's odd that such a little thing should make such a tremendous difference, isn't it?"

"That's all, though. Otherwise I'm the same as ever.

Now you

look quite the same, and yet-yet you're entirely changed in some indefinable way."

She laughed indulgently. "I suppose it's the effect of advancing years. And so you arrived this afternoon?"

"Yes. I found mother had Mrs. Clair's invitation, then I telephoned you, but you were not at home—”

"Out driving," she explained.

"-and Mrs. Allerton said you were coming here to-night."

"She never told me a word! I suppose she wanted to arrange a dramatic surprise. Let me see, you're teaching in that Boston school, aren't you?"

He smiled. "Yes, I'm teaching something, somewhere."

"That sounds like-oh, do you remember our talk in your rooms at Cambridge, Class Day night?"

"Perfectly. It degenerated into an hour with Mr. Arnold, I be

lieve."

"And then you went to Oxford. I heard about all you did there. Congratulations!"

"You never sent me any."

"I meant to truly, I did! But I came out that winter, you know, and everything was swept clean out of my head.”

"Mother wrote me about your triumphs. Well, I prophesied them, if you remember, that night in Cambridge."

"I was so afraid of it all, then. What a little fool I must have seemed!"

He smiled again, very slightly. "No," he remarked, dropping his eyes, "no, you didn't-you didn't."

"I had all sorts of ideas then," she continued, as he still looked down, "I was going to Oxford myself, you know. By the way, did you hunt up those places to show me?"

He nodded gently. "But I knew, as soon as mother's letters began to come, I would have to love them alone."

"Why didn't you show them to Evelyn?" she asked, tentatively.

"Oh, they were very private, those places! But I did see something of Miss Sturges while she was there. She'll do good work at college. Her ideas are splendid."

"Poor Evelyn! I haven't heard from her in ages! And yet we used to be such good pals!"

There was a little pause. "Poor Mary!" deliberately said he.

She started and glanced at him. "What do you mean?"

"I pity you as a living and very precious sacrifice to the inevitable." His tone was sober.

She picked at the feathers of her fan. "You needn't pity me, you know. Pity is always impertinent."

"I won't apologize. Mary, how could you?"

She looked at him for a moment with calm toleration. "Oh, Douglas, you haven't grown a bit older, have you? You've searched after strange gods all these four years. Have you found them? They weren't in your book. I don't think they lurk in that preparatory school. Will you ever find them? Isn't it the quest of the will-o'-the-wisp?"

His eyes grew very tender as he watched her. “Perhaps—but I must follow while I can. That's all I know, Mary. Yet it's enough." "And meanwhile you're passing by your happiness, your heritage of happiness! Can't you understand? You might better have gone into your brother's works and made a lot of money and married some nice girl-unless you're sure that you'll-you'll—”

"Yes?" he questioned, encouragingly.

"Learn to know your gods," she concluded with a nervous little laugh. "My way's the better way. I've thought it all out. The simple things are those that count. Jim and I will be every-day, jolly, contented people. We'll live the kind of life that you-well, scorn-but we'll be happy. You can't be!"

"You and Jim? Why-"

She noticed the amazement in his voice. "Didn't your mother tell

you?" she cried, hastily. "We're engaged-have been for nearly three weeks. I thought you knew all the time."

"I didn't know. He's a fine fellow, Mary. I've known him always, and I never-" he was trying to do the conventional, but suddenly he broke through. "I can't believe you're the same woman I talked with four years ago!"

She leaned towards him earnestly. "These last two or three months have-oh, Douglas, I feel so very sorry for you! To think, you can't understand! It-it seems unfair."

As they looked at each other, the orchestra began the introduction to the "Blue Danube." She smiled in sudden remembrance; but his gaze was unchanged. She noticed one or two queer little lines about his mouth.

"This is Jim's dance-every third one, you know," she explained, turning to look in the direction of the door. "I hope he knows I'm in here."

"He ought to be able to find you by this time," remarked the other man, sourly.

"Don't be cross, Douglas. Oh, there he is!" she cried, as Rockwood stuck his head through the doorway, saw her, and entered.

"Douglas and I have been at it again," she laughed, rising.. "We've discussed each other to our hearts' content." Then she turned to Leigh and said with deep, sweet conviction, “I hope the hunt won't be in vain, I hope you'll find it sometime. But even if you do, you can't—oh, I'm so happy! I want everyone else to be happy, too!"

"Yes?" remarked the poet, with the politest of smiles. "But perhaps it all depends on how one interprets the word. Good-night, Mary, -I mean, good-bye."

"Why, Douglas, leaving town again so soon? I'm awf'ly sorry!" interposed Rockwood, heartily.

The girl remembered enough to understand. "No, that isn't what he means," she said, picking up her train; then added, brightly, "I'm ready, Jim!"

X. Y. Z.

ODE TO NATURE.

Great Nature, mother of men's souls

As mother of their dust is Earth

Who tak'st them trembling at their birth
And lead'st them to the goal of goals,

Thy womb again when all is done,
And we have played our little parts
With destinies and human hearts
And turn our faces from the sun:

Great Nature, sombre and unmoved,
To thee with brimming lips we bow,
Mother of love and beauty, thou!
Goddess all-loving and beloved!

Queen of the pale shores and the deathless sea,
Where winds sing high of happy distant things,
Where sand-birds flutter, and on hasting wings
The sea gulls screeching o'er the breakers flee-
Spirit of waters, loud we cry to thee,

On whose dark bosom beggars lie and kings, Mother of tempests and the stinging gale, Mother of calms, O hail!