"It has seemed like a month since we sat here the evening before Uncle Cornie passed away," Eugene began. "He made a bad discus-throw and came over here just as I began to tell you something, Jerry. Do you remember what we were saying when he appeared on the scene?" "Yes, I remember." Jerry's voice was low, but there was no quaver in it. Her face, as she lifted it, seemed to his eyes the one face he could never paint. For him it was the fulfilment of a man's best dream. "There's only one grief in my heart at this minute--that I can never put your face as it is now on any canvas. But let me tell you some things that Aunt Jerry has been telling me. She seems so fond of you, and she says that after all the claims against your father's estate are settled there is really no income left for you. But she assures me that it makes no difference, because you can go on living with her exactly as you have always done. She told me she had never failed in the fruition of a single plan of hers, and she is too old to fail now. She has some plan for you--" The young artist hesitated. Jerry had never thought much about his good looks until in these June days in "Eden" when Love had come noiselessly down the way to her. And yet--a little faint, irresolute line in the man's face--a mere shadow, a ghost of nothing at all, fixed itself in her image of his countenance. A quick intuition flashed into her mind with the last words. "Aunt Jerry is too old for lots of things besides the failure of her plans. I know what she said, Gene, because I know what she thinks. She isn't exactly fond of me; she wants to control me. I believe there are only two planes of existence with her--one of absolute rule, and the other of absolute submission. She couldn't conceive of me in the first plane, of course, so I must be in the second." "Why, Geraldine Swaim, I never heard you speak so of your aunt before!" Eugene Wellington exclaimed. He had caught a new and very real line in the girl's face as she spoke. "Maybe not. But don't go Geraldine-ing me. It's too Aunt Jerry-ish. I'm coming to understand her better because I'm doing my own thinking now," Jerry replied. "As if you hadn't always done that, you little tyrant! I bear the scars of your teeth on my arms now--or I would bear them if I hadn't given up to you a thousand times years ago," Eugene declared, laughingly. "That's just it," Jerry replied. "I've been let to have my own way until Aunt Jerry thinks I must go on having just what she thinks I want, and to do that I must be dependent on her. And--Wait a minute, Gene--you will be dependent on her, too. You have only your gift. So both of us are to be pensioners of hers. That's her plan."