Well, events yet unborn are on the knees of the gods. I intend to go as straight to my destination as my judgment and will can carry me. I have but written that I shall not tell the Dryad of my love yet. Now I should like to modify that statement and say that I shall not tell her if I can help it. For a sudden sense that my passion is broadening and intensifying has come to me, and I shall make no promises--no, not one. Now, this moment, I quiver at the recollection of her cadenced laugh; I tremble as I see again the eyes which might craze a man of wood. Ah! Dryad, if you were here to-night--if you were here--if you were here-- CHAPTER SIXTEEN IN WHICH MUCH ADDED LIGHT IS SHED UPON MISS BERYL DRANE, BUT ONLY A GLIMMER UPON MY PROBLEM "This is a beautiful day." Such was my exceedingly original and extremely interesting greeting to Beryl Drane this morning. I arrived at the house at eight o'clock, found, as I thought, no one astir, and was preparing to knock when I discovered the young lady diligently clipping roses from a hedge near the back. It is not often that I descend to sheer banality, but I can offer no excuse for my opening remark as I came up over the grass behind her. She was a little startled. She turned quickly with a short "Oh!" and looked at me curiously. Somehow I did not like the look. It was possessive, in a way; intimate, as though we shared a secret, or something like that. She was dressed in a polka dot brown gingham, and had on an old bonnet whose projecting hood softened those lines which seemed to shriek of the things which made them. A low collar encircled her firm neck snugly. She wore leather half mitts, had a pair of shears in one hand, and from the elbow of her other arm hung a wicker basket over half filled with voluptuously red, dew-bright roses. She regarded me with that subtly smiling, upward glance which coquettes have, and in that morning air, with the flowers, under the shielding bonnet, she was pretty. She was too adroit to overdo the pose. It lasted scarcely two ticks from a grandfather's clock, then she smiled frankly, deftly looped the shears on a finger of her left hand, and held out her arm. "I'm _so_ glad to see you!" she said, winningly, and for the soul of me I could not help but feel my heart grow warmer in response to her tone. Ah, little sibyl! You have conjured more than one man's mind into deadly rashness, but you have paid, little moth with the soot-spotted wings! "Are you?" I replied, surprisedly, as I grasped her grippy, slender hand and uncovered. "Sure!... Don't you suppose Hebron is a trifle monotonous to me after the fleshpots of Egypt?" "I had thought you would be--not angry, but displeased and disgusted with me that I had not come sooner."