"I wonder," answered Mr. Magee. It came to him suddenly that in each person's definition of this intangible thing might lie exposed something of both character and calling. At the far end of the table Mrs. Norton's lined tired face met his gaze. To her he put his question. "Well," she answered, and her voice seemed softer than its wont, "I ain't thought much of that word for a good many years now. But when I do--say, I seem to see myself sitting on our porch back home--thirty years ago. I've got on a simple little muslin dress, and I'm slender as Elsie Janis, and the color in my cheeks is--well, it's the sort that Norton likes. And my hair--but--I'm thinking of him, of Norton. He's told me he wants to make me happy for life, and I've about decided I'll let him try. I see him--coming up our front walk. Coming to call on me--have I mentioned I've got a figure--a real sweet figure? That's about what romance means to me." "Youth, dear?" asks Miss Norton gently. "That's it, dearie," answered the older woman dreamily. "Youth." For a time those about the table sat in silence, picturing no doubt the slender figure on the steps of that porch long ago. Not without a humorous sort of pity did they glance occasionally toward the woman whom Norton had begged to make happy. The professor of Comparative Literature was the first to break the silence. "The dictionary," he remarked academically, "would define romance as a species of fictitious writing originally composed in the Romance dialects, and afterward in prose. But--the dictionary is prosaic, it has no soul. Shall I tell you what romance means to me? I will. I see a man toiling in a dim laboratory, where there are strange fires and stranger odors. Night and day he experiments, the love of his kind in his eyes, a desire to help in his heart. And then--the golden moment--the great moment in that quiet dreary cell--the moment of the discovery. A serum, a formula--what not. He gives it to the world and a few of the sick are well again, and a few of the sorrowful are glad. Romance means neither youth nor power to me. It means--service." He bent his dim old eyes on his food, and Mr. Magee gazed at him with a new wonder. Odd sentiments these from an old man who robbed fireplaces, held up hermits, and engaged in midnight conferences by the annex door. More than ever Magee was baffled, enthralled, amused. Now Mr. Max leered about the table and contributed his unsavory bit. "Funny, ain't it," he remarked, "the different things the same word means to a bunch of folks. Say romance to me, and I don't see no dim laboratory. I don't see nothing dim. I see the brightest lights in the world, and the best food, and somebody, maybe, dancing the latest freak dance in between the tables. And an orchestra playing in the distance--classy dames all about--a taxi clicking at the door. And me sending word to the chauffeur 'Let her click till the milk carts rumble--I can pay.' Say--that sure is romance to me."