He did not himself care for motoring—being, truth to tell, afraid of it—but she was to choose a car next week. She had told him about her father and her mother and the children. She was to have the latter come up to stay with her after she was married—do anything for them that she would. In imagination now she was taking them through all the shops in town, buying them toy horses and soldiers and balls, and dressing them in darling little light-blue sailor-suits. She could hardly wait for the time to come! She thought with a little awe that she hadn’t known that Mr. Sutton was as well off as he seemed to be. And the way he had spoken of Lawson—Ah, Lawson! That name tugged at her heart; this suddenly became one of those anguished moments when she yearned over him as over a beloved lost child, to be wept for, succored only through her efforts. She must never forget! “Lawson, I believe in you.” She stopped in the shaded, quiet street with its garden-surrounded houses, and said the words aloud with a solemn sense of immortal infinite power, before coming back to the eager surface planning of her own life, with an intermediate throb of a new and deeper loneliness. The Dosia who had so upliftingly faced truth had only strength enough left now to evade it. Perhaps some of that exquisite inner perception of her nature had been jarred confusingly out of touch. [Illustration: _Flowers and children, children and flowers_] Mrs. Wayne was in, although, the maid announced, she had but just returned from town. A moment later Dosia heard herself called from above: “Dosia Linden! Won’t you come up-stairs? You don’t mind, do you?” “No, indeed,” answered Dosia, obeying the summons with alacrity, and pleased that she should be considered so intimate. This was more than she had expected—an informal reception and talk! With Dosia’s own responsive warmth, she felt that she really must always have wanted to see more of Alice, who, in her lacy pink-and-white negligée, might be pardoned for wishing to show off this ornament of her trousseau. “I hope you won’t mind the appearance of this room,” she announced, after a hospitable violet-perfumed embrace. “I went to town so early this morning that I didn’t have time to really set things to rights, and I don’t like the new maid to touch them.” “You have so many pretty things,” said Dosia admiringly. “Yes, haven’t I? Take that seat by the window, it’s cooler. Please don’t look at that dressing-table; Harry leaves his neckties everywhere, though he has his own chiffonier in the other room—he’s such a _bad_ boy! He seems to think I have nothing to do but put away his things for him.” Mrs. Wayne paused with a bridal air of important matronly responsibility. She was a tall, thin, black-haired, dashing girl, not at all pretty, who was always spoken of compensatingly as having a great deal of “style,” but she seemed to have gained some new and gentle charm of attraction because she was so happy.