"I remember. Your father laid some injunction on you about converting missionary energies and subscriptions for home use." "That is a quaint way of putting it. It is true his injunction first set me thinking, and it led to my developing certain Utopian ideas of my own. As the result, I am now studying architecture. No doubt you will think it a strange choice. There begins another dance, and we've both partners." "How vexatious!" said Miss Brooke. "Just when I am so interested. I am really longing to hear all about your Utopia." "I should so much have liked to tell you," murmured Paul, thinking he might even have sat out another dance if it were not for his foolish exclamation. "Oh, but you're going to call, Mr. Middleton." "I shall be very happy," said Paul, repressing a start. She wrote her address for him on the back of his programme, adding, "I shall be in on Wednesday afternoon." He thanked her and took her down to the dancing-room where she was pounced upon immediately, and he then discovered, to his surprise, that he and Miss Brooke _had_ sat out two dances! Moreover, the frown which Celia gave him over her partner's shoulder as she waltzed by made him refer to his programme, when he found he had overlooked the little tick at the side of dance number fourteen. CHAPTER II. "A DAY and a half to wait before seeing Miss Brooke again," was Paul's first reflection the next morning. "All I should have laughed at as absurd a month ago, proves to be true. I am fast in the toils." And all through the day Miss Brooke filled his thoughts. He was, somehow, a different person from before, as if he had awakened from some sluggish torpor.