As Allan John joined the group at the fireplace everybody began talking weather again. From the chuckle of the birch-logs to the splash on the window-pane the little groups shifted and changed. Everybody seemed to be waiting for something. On the neglected breakfast table even the gay upstanding hemispheres of grapefruit rolled over on their beds of ice to take another nap. In a great flutter of white and laughter the May Girl herself came prancing over the threshold. It wasn't just the fact of being in white that made her look so astonishingly festal; she was almost always in white. Not yet the fact of laughter. Taken all in all I think she was the most radiantly laughing youngster that I have ever known. But most astonishingly festal she certainly looked, nevertheless. Maybe it was the specially new and chic little twist which she had given her hair. Maybe it was the absurdly coquettish dab of black court-plaster which she had affixed to one dimply cheek. "Oh, if I'm going to be engaged to-day to a real artist," she laughed, "I've certainly got to take some extra pains with my personal appearance. Why, I've hardly slept all night," she confided ingenuously, "I was so excited!" "Yes, won't it be interesting," whispered the Bride to George Keets, "to see what Mr. Kennilworth will really do? He's so awfully temperamental! And so--so inexcusably beautiful. Whatever he does is pretty sure to be interesting. Now up-stairs--all day yesterday--wouldn't it----?" "Yes, wouldn't it be interesting," glowed Ann Woltor quite unexpectedly, "if he'd made her something really wonderful? Something that would last, I mean, after the game was over? Even just a toy, something that would outlast Time itself. Something that even when she was old she could point to and say, 'Claude Kennilworth made that for me when--we were young'." "Why, Ann Woltor!" I stammered. "Do you feel that way about him? Does--does he make you feel that way, too!" "I think--he would make--anyone feel that way--too," intercepted Allan John quite amazingly. In three days surely it was the only voluntary statement he had made, and everybody turned suddenly to stare at him. But it was only too evident from the persistent haggardness of his expression that he had no slightest intention in the world of pursuing his unexpected volubility. "And it isn't just his good looks either!" resumed the Bride as soon as she had recovered from her own astonishment at the interpolation. "Oh, something, very different," mused Ann Woltor. "The queer little sense he gives you of--of wires humming! Whether you like him or not that queer little sense of 'wires humming' that all really creative people give you! As though--as though--they were being rather specially re-charged all the time from the Main Battery!" "The 'Main Battery,'" puzzled the Bridegroom, "being----?" "Why God,--of course!" said the Bride with a vague sort of surprise.