Questions of taste as to this procedure, hanging hazily at the back of his consciousness, were dispelled by Arabella’s mirthful attitude toward the plan. He could hardly tell this joyous young person that it would be transcending the bounds of girlish naughtiness to telegraph a lot of people she didn’t know to meet at the house of a gentleman who enjoyed national fame for his lack of humor. Arabella would only laugh at him. The delight that danced in her eyes was infectious and the spirit of adventure possessed him. He was impatient for the outcome: still, would she--dared she--do it? She had drawn on a pair of tan gloves and struck her hands together lightly. “This has been the nicest of little parties! I thank you--the first of my clients! But I must skip!” He had been dreading the moment when she might take it into her head to skip. They had lingered long and the sun had dropped like a golden ball beyond the woodland. “But you will let me help with the tea things?” he cried eagerly. “I can telephone from the crossroads for my machine.” She ignored his offer. A dreamy look came into her eyes. “I wonder,” she said with the air of a child proposing a new game, “whether anyone’s ever written a story about a person--man or girl--who undertakes to find some one; who seeks and seeks until it’s a puzzling and endless quest--and then finds that the quarry is himself--or herself! Do you care for that? Think it over. I throw that in merely as a sample. We can do a lot better than that.” “Oh, you must put it in the bill!” “Now,” she said, “please, when you leave, don’t look back; and don’t try to find me! In this business who seeks shall never find. We place everything on the knees of the gods. Thursday evening, at Mr. Banning’s, at eight o’clock. Please be prompt.” Then she lifted her arms toward the sky and cried out happily: “There, sir, is the silver trumpet of romance! I make you a present of it.” He raised his eyes to the faint outline of the new moon that shone clearly through the tremulous dusk. As he looked she placed her hands on the veranda railing and vaulted over it so lightly that he did not know she had gone until he heard her laughing as she sprang away and darted through the shrubbery below. From the instant Arabella disappeared Farrington tortured himself with doubts. One hour he believed in her implicitly; the next he was confident that she had been playing with him and that he would never see her again.