“Millie,” he said in a tone of mock despair, tapping her hand lightly, “you’re an incorrigible mystic!” They were interrupted by a knock on the glass door, which swung open, disclosing Leila and Bruce. “Mr. Storrs and I are dying of curiosity! You’ve been talking here for ages!” cried Leila. “Millie’s been amusing herself at my expense,” said Mills. “Mr. Storrs, I wish you’d tell me sometime what Miss Harden means when she reaches into the infinite and brings down----” “Roses!” laughed Millicent. V His glimpse of Franklin Mills and Millicent at the conservatory door affected Bruce disagreeably. The fact that the two had been discussing impersonal matters did not lessen his resentment. Millicent with Mills’s roses in her hand; Mills courteously attentive, addressing the girl with what to Bruce was a lover-like air, had made a picture that greatly disturbed him. Very likely, with much this same air, with the same winning manner and voice, Mills had wooed his mother! He saw in Mills a sinister figure--a man who, having taken advantage of one woman, was not to be trusted with another. The pity he had at times felt for Mills went down before a wave of jealous anger and righteous indignation. The man was incapable of any true appreciation of Millicent; he was without wit or soul to penetrate to the pure depths of the girl’s nature. “You two are always talking about things I don’t understand!” Leila said to them; and led Bruce on through the conservatories, talking in her inconsequential fashion. When they returned to the house someone had begun playing old-fashioned games--blindman’s buff, drop the handkerchief and London Bridge. When these ceased to amuse, the rugs were cleared away and they danced to the phonograph. Mills encouraged and participated in all this as if anxious to show that he could be as young as the youngest. And what occasion could be more fitting than an evening in his handsome country house, with his children and their friends about him! With Millicent constantly before his eyes, entering zestfully into all these pleasures, Bruce recovered his tranquillity. For the thousandth time he convinced himself that he was not a weakling to suffer specters of the past and forebodings of the future to mar his life. He danced with Millicent; seized odd moments in which to talk to her; tried to believe that she had a particular smile for him.... “I wonder if you’d drive me in?” asked Mrs. Torrence when the party began to break up. “I’d been counting on it!” said Bruce promptly. Constance came along and waived her rights to his escort, as she and Shepherd were taking the Freemans home. “I believe we’re a little better acquainted than we were,” she said meaningfully. “It seemed to me we made a little headway,” Bruce replied. “Come and see me soon! You never can tell when I’ll need a little consoling.”