“Stop a minute. I will be only twenty-three then. You will be only twenty-five. That is an age at which most young people nowadays think themselves lucky to start—and so would you if you didn’t have your own little inherited income through no effort of your own. Only three years and a half, Grant! Would you do it?” “You know perfectly well you’re asking too much for any man. Be reasonable, Joy. What has gotten into you to make you talk like this? It seems to me that after I have fought out my problem, and come to you like this, there might be a little something expected of you.” She smiled, faintly amused. “Since you had decided, you thought there was no more to it—but you see, Grant, all that time I was going through experiences and thoughts—that have made me see that as far as I’m concerned—_there’s no more to it_.” She rose, her gesture spelling dismissal. “So you wouldn’t wait—three years and a half, or whatever it might be. I think that shows, Grant, that your love was about the same as mine.” Mesmerized by the finality of her tone, he started to the door, but stopped halfway. “Am I to believe—that you are always going to take this stand—be this way?” “Please do believe it. I am not drunk with music—I shall always take this stand with you—because, you see, I don’t really love you, and I suppose that—makes all the difference!” He gained the door, and stood looking back. She was regarding him with parted lips, cheeks darkly flushed, a little pulse beating in her temple, her hair blanketing her shoulders in folds of gold. “And please,” she articulated in a thin thread of sound—“please forget me—very quickly!” “Forget you——” The words escaped him in a sort of wonder. They stood motionless, eyes fixed upon one another, and into the faces of each there stole an impatient bewilderment. They had leaped to the peaks of poetry and youth’s dreams for a few lambent hours, and now the peaks were far away again. Veiled in the clouds of awakened scepticism and analysis, the peaks were higher than before, and their aspect had forever changed. A tremor passed in the air between them. Knifing across it came the stab of the doorbell—anticlimax of everyday routine cutting the wheels of drama from under. Few can stand the swift descent. Joy hesitated, then came forward. Grant hastily captured his hat, which had rolled to the hall floor some time ago, and stood brushing off the dust of which there was a disgraceful amount. As the door swung open both fell back in different reactions. Jim Dalton stood on the threshold. “Good evening, Miss Nelson,” he smiled. “I——” His glance travelled past her to Grant. “This seems to be Miss Nelson’s evening at home,” Grant said evenly. “Good-bye, Joy.” She watched him signal for the elevator, still brushing the dust from his hat. Grant would probably be a masculine replica of his mother when he was her age——