"Well, for me! You see I've never had a real home, Lyn. It's one of the luxuries I've always dreamed of." "I had thought," Lynda's clear eyes clouded, "that your uncle's house would be your home at last. It is big enough for us all--we need not run against each other." "Keep my room under the roof, Lyn." Truedale looked at her yearningly and she--misunderstood! "I shall often come to that--to you and Brace--but humour me in this fancy of mine." So she humoured him--working early and late--putting more of her own heart in it than he was ever to know, for she believed--poor girl--that he would offer it to her some day and then--when he found out about the money--how exactly like a fairy tale it all would be! And Lynda had had so few fairy tales in her life. And while she designed and Conning watched and suggested, they talked of his long-neglected work. "You'll have time soon, Con, to give it your best thought. Did you do much while you were away?" "Yes, Lyn, a great deal!" Truedale was sitting by the tiny hearth in his diminutive living room. He and Lynda had demanded, and finally succeeded in obtaining an open space for real logs; disdaining, much to the owner's amazement, an asbestos mat or gas monstrosity. "I really put blood in the thing." "And when may I hear some of it? I'm wild to get back to our beaten tracks." Truedale raised his eyes, but he was looking beyond Lynda; he was seeing Nella-Rose in the nest he was preparing for her. "Soon, Lyn. Soon. And when you do--you, of all the world, will understand, sympathize, and approve." "Thank you, Con, thank you. Of course I will, but it is good to have you know it! Let me see, what colour scheme shall we introduce in the living room?" "Couldn't we have a sort of blue-gray; a rather smoky tint with sunshine in it?" "Good heavens, Con! And it is a north room, too." "Well, then, how about a misty, whitish--" "Worse and worse. Con, in a north room there must be warmth and real colour." "There will be. But put what you choose, Lyn, it will surely be all right." "Suppose, then, we make it golden brown, or--dull, soft reds?" Truedale recalled the shabby little shawl that Nella-Rose had worn before she donned her winter disguise. "Make it soft dull red, Lyn--but not _too_ dull." Truedale no longer meant to lay his secret bare before departing for the South. While he would not acknowledge it to his anxious heart, he realized that he must base the future on the outcome of his journey. Once he laid hands upon Nella-Rose, he would act promptly and hopefully, but--he must be sure, now, before he made a misstep. There had been mistakes enough, heaven knew; he must no longer play the fool.