For many years Judge Healey had been foster-father to Red Hill in general and to Gerry in particular. With almost womanly intuition he read what was in Gerry’s mind before the picture, and acting on impulse, the judge crossed the street and bought it. While the judge was still in the picture shop, Gerry came out of the jeweler’s and started briskly for home. He had purchased a pendant of brilliants, extravagant for his purse, but yet saved to good taste by a simple originality in design. He waited until the dinner-hour, and then slipped his gift into Alix’s hand as they walked down the stairs together. She stopped beneath the hall light. “I can’t wait, dear; I simply can’t,” she said, and snapped open the case. “Oh!” she gasped. “How dear! How perfectly dear! You old sweetheart!” She threw her arms about his neck and kissed him twice; then she flew away to the drawing-room in search of Mrs. Lansing and the judge, the sole guests at the little anniversary dinner. Gerry straightened his tie and followed. Alix’s tongue was rippling, her whole body was rippling, with excitement and pleasure. She dangled her treasure before their eyes. She laid it against her warm neck and ran to a mirror. The light in her eyes matched the light in the stones. The judge took the jewel and laid it in the palm of his strong hand. It looked in danger of being crushed. “A beautiful thing, Gerry,” he said, “and well chosen. Some poet jeweler dreamed that twining design, and set the stones while the dew was still on the grass.” After dinner the four gathered in the library, but they were hardly seated when Alix sprang up. Her glance had followed Gerry’s startled gaze. He was staring at the coveted picture he had been looking at in the gallery that afternoon. It hung in the niche in which his thoughts had placed it. Alix took her stand before it. She glanced inquiringly at the others. Mrs. Lansing nodded at the judge. Alix turned back to the picture, and gravity stole into her face. Then she faced the judge with a smile. “We live,” she said, “in a Philistine age, don’t we? But I’ve never let my Philistinism drive pictures from their right place in the heart. Pictures in art galleries--” she shrugged her pretty shoulders--“I have not been trained up to them. To me they are mounted butterflies in a museum, cut flowers crowded at the florist’s. But this picture and that nook--they have waited for each other. You see the picture nestling down for a long rest, and it seems a small thing, and then it catches your eye and holds it, and you see that it is a little door that opens on a wide world. It has slipped into the room and become a part of life.” A strange stillness followed Alix’s words. To the judge and to Gerry it was as though the picture had opened a window to her mind. Then she closed the window. “Come, Gerry,” she said, turning, “make your bow to the judge and bark.” Gerry was excited, though he did not show it.