"Estelle says we must go away somewhere for the summer, because it's awfully hot down here in Florence, we're told. We're thinking of taking some sort of place at the seashore for the bathing season. You'll be coming down to visit us, won't you? Then by and by, when I've had pretty near enough of the kind of life I'm leading, tell you what I'm thinking I'll do. Give up the house I've got and take another, different, and fit it up for a children's hospital, a small one, of course, to be within my means, and run it myself, and do what I can of the nursing. I've been thinking of it for some time as a good thing to do instead of spending my money and nothing to show for it. It would be something to do for the sake of little Dan, to make it so it wouldn't be the same as if he never had passed through the world. Then I shall have my work just as you have yours, Gerald. And so we'll live on, each so interested in all the other does. And you'll come to see me, and I'll go to see you--chaperoned, if you insist, though I understand a studio can be visited without impropriety, and--" "You can leave me out of your plans for the future. I am going away to forget you." "Oh, no, you're not. You're coming to see me to-morrow. Five o'clock at the very latest, hear?" "I'm afraid you will have to excuse me." "You wouldn't break my heart like that for anything, Gerald Fane! You wouldn't let the foolish doings of this day destroy all the months have built up! You're not so mean. When I tell you it'll be all right and just as it was before--" But he stubbornly would not agree, and they quarreled, as so often, half in play, half in real exasperation, each calling the other selfish. But at her door, when he took her hands to thank her for the day she had given him, he dropped quite naturally, "Until to-morrow, then," and she entered her great white hall with a happy, shining face. * * * * * In the half-light of the solitary hall-lamp the white-and-gold door between the curving halves of the stairway stood open on to the blackness of the unlighted ball-room. At the threshold appeared Estelle, and stood with folded arms until the servant who answered the bell had been heard retreating down the back stairs. She came forward with a tired, troubled, pallid, and severe face. "Well, I'm glad you've got back!" she said, as much as to say that she had given up looking for her. And as Aurora unexpectedly cast mischievous, muscular arms around her and tried to squeeze the breath out of her, she gasped amid spasms of resistance: "Stop! Don't try to pacify me! I'm in no mood for fooling! I'm as cross with you as I can be!" "You little slate-pencil! You little lemon-drop, you!" said Aurora, squeezing harder, then suddenly letting go. "I'm in no mood to be funny, you--you county-fair prize punkin! I've been worried half to death. Where've you been so long, 'way into the night, long past eleven o'clock?"