"Oh, but I want to hear!" said Phyllis, with that quick, affectionate sympathy of hers that was so winning, leaning forward and watching them with the lighted look in her blue eyes. It all seemed to her tired, alert mind like some story she might have read to her children, an Arabian Nights narrative which might begin, "And the Master of the House, ascribing praise unto Allah, repeated the following Tale." "There have always been just the two of them, mother and son," said the Master of the House. "And Allan has always been a very great deal to his mother." "Poor Angela!" murmured his wife. "They are old friends of ours," her husband explained. "My wife and Mrs. Harrington were schoolmates. "Well, Allan, the boy, grew up, dowered with everything a mother could possibly desire for her son, personally and otherwise. He was handsome and intelligent, with much charm of manner." "I know now what people mean by 'talking like a book,'" thought Phyllis irreverently. "And I don't believe any one man _could_ be all that!" "There was practically nothing," Mr. De Guenther went on, "which the poor lad had not. That was one trouble, I imagine. If he had not been highly intelligent he would not have studied so hard; if he had not been strong and active he might not have taken up athletic sports so whole-heartedly; and when I add that Allan possessed charm, money and social status you may see that what he did would have broken down most young fellows. In short, he kept studies, sports and social affairs all going at high pressure during his four years of college. But he was young and strong, and might not have felt so much ill effects from all that; though his doctors said afterwards that he was nearly at the breaking point when he graduated." Phyllis bent closer to the story-teller in her intense interest. Why, it _was_ like one of her fairy-tales! She held her breath to listen, while the old lawyer went gravely on. "Allan could not have been more than twenty-two when he graduated, and it was a very short while afterwards that he became engaged to a young girl, the daughter of a family friend. Louise Frey was her name, was it not, love?" "Yes, that is right," said his wife, "Louise Frey." "A beautiful girl," he went on, "dark, with a brilliant color, and full of life and good spirits. They were both very young, but there was no good reason why the marriage should be delayed, and it was set for the following September." A princess, too, in the story! But--where had she gone? "The two of them only," he had said. "It must have been scarcely a month," the story went on--Mr. De Guenther was telling it as if he were stating a case--"nearly a month before the date set for the wedding, when the lovers went for a long automobile ride, across a range of mountains near a country-place where they were both staying. They were alone in the machine.