When Dan, on the minute of two, went to the Savoy, Higgins, as was her custom, did not meet him. Miss Lane met him herself. She was reading a letter by the table, and when Dan was announced she put it back in its envelope. Blair had seen her only in soft clinging evening dresses, in white visionary clothes, or in her dazzling part costume, where the play dress of the dancer displayed her beauty and her charms. To-day she wore a tailor-made gown, and in her dark cloth dress, in her small hat, she seemed a new woman—some one he hadn’t known and did not know, and he experienced the thrill a man always feels when the woman he loves appears in an unaccustomed dress and suggests a new mystery. “Oh, I say! You’re not going out, are you?” In the lapel of her close little coat was a flower he had given her. He wanted to lean forward and kiss it as it rested there. She assured him: “I have just come in; had an early lunch and took a long walk—think of it! I haven’t taken a walk alone since I can remember!” Her walk had given her only the ghost of a flush, which rose over her delicate skin, fading away like a furling flag. Her frailness, her slenderness, the air of good-breeding her dress gave her, added to Dan’s deepening emotions. She seemed infinitely dear, and a thing to be protected and fostered. “Can’t you sit down for a minute? I’ve come to make you a real call.” “Of course,” she laughed. “But, first, I must answer this letter.” His jealousy rose and he caught hold of her hand that held the envelope. “Look here, you are not to write it if it is to that damned scoundrel. I took you away from him last night and you are never to see him again.” For the first time the two really looked at each other. Her lips parted as though she would reprove him, and the boy murmured: “That’s all right. I mean what I say—never to see him again! Will you promise me? Promise me—I can’t bear it! I won’t have it!” A film of emotion crossed his clear young eyes and her slender hands were held fast in his clasp. His face was beautiful in its tenderness and in a righteous anger as he bent it on her. Instead of reproving him as she had done before, instead of snatching away her hands, she swayed, and at the sight of her weakness his eyes cleared, and the film lifted like a curtain. She was not fainting, but, as her face turned toward his, he saw it transformed, and Dan caught her in her dark dress, the flowers in her bodice, to his heart. He held her as if he had snatched her from a wreck and in a safe embrace lifted her high to the shore of a coral strand. He kissed her, first timidly, wonderingly, with the sacrament of first love on his lips. Then he kissed her as his heart bade him, and when he set her free she was crying, but the tears on his face were not all her tears. “Little boy, how crazy, how perfectly crazy! Oh, Dan—Dan!”