"Thank you very much, Alicia, I feel brighter already. I think that will be enough for to-day. By the way, Alicia," I went on rapidly, fumbling with my papers, "it strikes me your allowance is too small. You must need dozens and dozens of things that cost money. Here is a cheque for fifty dollars I wrote out this morning—but," I added half absently—"if you need more I can just as easily make it a hundred," and I laughed a trifle foolishly—oh, I could act, this morning, act almost as well as Alicia. She gazed at me intently for a space, silent, alert—a flash of suspicion—and then with an ineffable tenderness and a great relief shining in her eyes. "Oh, you darling Uncle Ranny," she leaped from her chair and flew toward me, pressing both her hands down on my shoulders. Immobile as a Buddha I sat as she kissed me on the cheek. "But do you really think you can—give me all this?" "Oh, yes, Alicia," I laughed with the bravado of Fred Salmon. "I am quite sure I can. What are uncles for if—" but I could say no more. She hung over me for an instant and then abruptly left me. She, too, was fearful of saying more. But not for the same reason—oh, not for the same reason! All that day, Alicia, as I could not help overhearing, was vainly endeavoring to reach Randolph on the telephone in New York. She rang the fraternity house. She tried the homes of his friends. But all to no purpose. Randolph was not to be found. And that evening Alicia mounted the stairs to her room with a sort of drooping, febrile anxiety, with an anxious unnatural gayety. *CHAPTER XXV* Only some fifteen hours have passed and the world is changed to a dazzling brilliance. Alicia would not leave me, poor overwrought child. She has refused to go to bed and insisted upon staying near me, upon "meeting the dawn" with me. She now lies stretched upon my couch, covered over with a rug, and she has just been overtaken by slumber. And her presence there under my eyes, Randolph Byrd, is the nearest taste of Heaven that you and I have known, or possibly ever will know, in this life. It is dawn enough for me now and for you, my friend—a dawn so resplendent that I for one shall never desire a brighter. And since there can be no more sleep for me this night, and since this may be the last entry for you in these memoirs, for many a day, if not forever, I shall endeavor to still the flying heart, the mad exultation rioting in my veins, by noting down for you, how sketchily and incoherently soever, the momentous occurrences of the youngest hours.