empty world all crowded with strangers--and there stood Joan. It was natural that he should believe, under those circumstances, that he and she did not meet by mere accident, that they had been brought together by design--all the more natural when he listened to her story of mental and physical imprisonment and came to see, during their daily stolen meetings, that he was as necessary to her as she was to him. Every time he left her and watched her run back to that old house of old people, it was borne in upon him more definitely that he was appointed in the cosmic scheme to rescue Joan from her peculiar cage and help her to try her wings. All about that young fresh, eager creature whose eyes were always turned so ardently toward the city, his imagination and superstition built a bower of love. He had never met a girl in any way like her--one who wanted so much and would give so little in return for it, who had an eel-like way of dodging hard-and-fast facts and who had made up her mind with all the zest and thoughtlessness of youth to mold life, when finally she could prove how much alive she was, into no other shape than the one which most appealed to her. She surprised and delighted him with her quick mental turns and twists, and although she sometimes made him catch his breath at her astoundingly frank expression of individualism, he told himself that she was still in the chrysalis stage and could only get a true and normal hang of things after rubbing shoulders with what she called life with a capital L. Two weeks slipped away more quickly than these two young things had ever known them to go, and the daily meetings, utterly guileless and free from flirtation, were the best part of the day; but there was a new note in Joan's laugh as she swung out of the wood and went toward Martin one afternoon. He caught it and looked anxiously at her. "Is anything wrong?" "There will be," she said. "I just caught sight of Gleave among the trees. He was spying!" "Why do you think so?" "Oh, he never walks a yard unless he has to. I thought I saw him eying me rather queerly at lunch. I've been looking happy lately, and that's made him suspicious." "But what can he do?" "What can't he do! Grandmother's one of the old-fashioned sort who thinks that a girl must never speak to a man without a chaperon. They must have been a lively lot of young women in her time! Gleave will tell her that I've been coming here to meet you, and then there'll be a pretty considerable row." Martin was incredulous. He was in America in the twentieth century. Young people did as they liked, and parents hardly ventured to remonstrate. He showed his teeth in the silent laugh that was characteristic of him. "Oh, no! I'll be all right. Your grandfather knew my father."