and general adaptability, looked like comedy in comparison.

"Grandmother!" Electra spoke with a rapid emphasis, "do you know who that is ? "

"No, I'm sure I don't." "It is Markham MacLeod." "What makes you think that? "I know him. I know his picture. I know that bust of him. He is here before Peter expected."

Life and color came into her face. She laid down her book and papers, and went with a sweeping haste to the hall door. Billy was coming with the stranger up the path, and MacLeod, glancing at the girl's waiting figure, took off his hat and looked at her responsively. Electra's heart was beating as she had never felt it beat before. Greatness was coming to her threshold, and it looked its majesty. MacLeod had a tremendous dignity of bearing added to the gifts nature had endowed him with at the start. He was a giant with the suppleness of the dancer and athlete. His strong profile had beauty, his florid skin was tanned by the sea, his blue eyes were smiling at Electra, and in spite of the whiteness of his thick hair, he did not seem old to her. She would have said he had the dower of being perennially young. Meantime Billy Stark, who had known him at once from his portraits, had named him to her, and the great man had taken her hand. He had explained that he was in advance of his time, that he had driven to Peter's and had been told that the young man was probably here. So he had strolled over to find him.

"He is not here," said Electra. "Please come in." She was breathless with the excitement of such notability under her roof. She led the way to the sitting-room, judging hastily that grandmother was too shaken by her mysterious attack to see a stranger, and also even tremblingly anxious to speak with him before any one could share the charm. MacLeod followed her, offering commonplaces in a rich voice that made them memorable,

and Billy stayed behind to throw away his cigar, and debate for an instant. whether he need go in. Then he heard a voice from the library softly calling him. "Billy, I want you."

He stepped in through the long window, and there was Madam Fulton, half laughing, half crying, and shaking all over. He ran to her in affectionate alarm.

"Billy," said she, "I've had a temper fit."

Billy put his arm about her and took her to the sofa. There he sat down beside her, and she dropped her head on his shoulder.

"Shoulders are still very strengthening, Billy," said she, laughing more than she cried, "even at our age."

"They're something to lean on," said Billy. "There! there, dear! there!"

Presently she laughed altogether, with no admixture of tears, and Billy got out his handkerchief and wiped her face. But she still shook, from time to time, and he was troubled for her.

"Now," she said presently, withdrawing from him, and patting her white hair, "Now I think we've weathered it."

"What was it?" ventured Billy.

"I can't tell you now. I might die alaughing. But I will." She rested her hand on his shoulder a moment before she went away. "I'll tell you what it is, Billy," she said, "the beauty of you is you're so human. You're neither good nor bad. You're just human."

XIII

Markham MacLeod's great advantage, after that of his wonderful physique, was his humility. A carping humorist, who saw him dispassionately, the more so that women were devoted to "the chief," said that humility was his long suit. There was his splendid body, instinct with a magnetic charm. He was born, charlatans told him, to be a healer. But he deprecated his own gifts. With a robust humor he disclaimed whatever he had done, and listened to other voices,

"Oh, yes," returned Electra. "He has not been here, but I will send for him. He shall come to luncheon. You must stay."

"Shall I?" He was all good-nature, all readiness and adaptability. Electra excused herself to give the maid an order,

"You are needed over there."

She glowed the more, and he looked upon her kindly as a handsome young woman whose enthusiasm became her. He smiled and shook his head.

"I don't know whether they wanted me so much. I needed them." "Your brothers, you mean. The units that make your brotherhood."

She was quoting from his last reported speech, and her spirits rose as she felt how glad she was to have been ready. It seemed to her that there were so many things she had to say at once that they would come tumultuously. MacLeod, MacLeod, when his position was assured, was quite willing to let the disciple talk. It was only over ground not yet tilled that his eloquence fell like rain. And Electra, leaning toward him in a brilliant, even a timid expectation, was saying,

"Tell me about Russia. What do you foresee?"

A reporter had asked him the same question a few hours before, and the answer would be in the evening paper. He smiled at her, and spread out his hands in a disclaiming gesture.

"You know what I foresee. You know what you foresee yourself. It is the same thing."

"Yes," said Electra, "it is the same thing."

But there were times when MacLeod wanted to escape from posturing, even though it brought him adulation.

"I have n't apologized for breaking in on you like this," he said, with his en

the woman, temptation came upon her. Yet it was not temptation, she told herself. This was the obvious thing to do.

"Tell Mr. Grant I wish him particularly to come to luncheon," she said, "and to bring " she hesitated at the name and shirked it, "and to bring the young lady,

the lady who is staying there." Then she returned to MacLeod. But she was not altogether at ease. Electra was accustomed to examine her motives, and she had the disquieting certainty that, this time, though they would do for the literal eye, they had not been entirely pure. Still, was it her fault if Rose, confronted by the newcomer, proved unprepared and showed what was fragile in her testimony? But she was not to be thrown off the scent of public affairs.

"Talk about Russia," she entreated. She had never felt so spontaneously at ease with any one.

MacLeod was used to making that impression and he smiled on her the more kindly seeing how the old charm worked.

"I'd rather talk about America," he said, "about this place of yours. It's a bully place."

Electra was devoted to academic language, and to her certainty that all great souls expressed themselves in it. She winced a little, but recovered herself when he asked with a new conversational seriousness, "And how is my friend Grant ?"

"Well." She found some difficulty in answering more fully, because it somehow became apparent to her that he had not really placed her. Peter was his only

clue in the town. It hardly looked as if he expected to find a daughter here.

“Is he painting?" MacLeod went on. Electra frowned a little. Peter was doing nothing but idling, she suspected, up to yesterday, and then, driving past, she had caught a glimpse of him in the garden before a canvas and of Rose lying before him in her long chair. That had given her a keener, a more bitter curiosity than she was prepared for in herself. She had shrunk back a little from it, timid before the suspicion that she might like Peter more tempestuously and unreasonably than was consonant with selfmastery. But while these thoughts ran through her head, she gazed at MacLeod with her clear eyes and answered,

"I fancy he looks upon this as his vacation. He must have worked very hard in Paris."

MacLeod entered into that with fluency. Peter must have worked hard, he owned, but that was in the days before they met. When they met, Peter's talent was at its blossoming point. It was more than talent. It was genius, it was so free, so strong, so unconsidered. He implied that Peter had everything that belonged to a fortunate youth.

Electra's eyes glowed. Here was some one to justify her choice. The newspapers had done it, but she had not yet heard Peter's praises from the mouth of

man.

The two men recurred humorously to their meeting in the garden, and owned their willingness to continue the acquaintance. At the moment there were steps and MacLeod turned to see Rose coming into the room. Electra's heart beat thickly. She felt choked by it. And there was, she could not help owning, a distinct drop of disappointment when MacLeod, with an exclamation of delighted wonder, went forward and kissed Rose on the cheek. Then he kept her hand while he gave the other one to Peter, and regarded them both with expansive kindliness. Rose was the one who had blenched under the ordeal. Yet she had herself immediately in hand. She let her fingers stay in MacLeod's grasp. She looked at him, not affectionately or in pride, but with a sad steadfastness, as if he were one of the monumental difficulties of life, not to be ignored. Peter was ecstasy itself.

"How did you get here?" he was insisting. "How did you know I might be over here? You had n't met Electra."

Then the stranger dropped the hands he held and turned to her.

"I have n't met her yet," he said, with a humorous consideration that stirred her heart. "Is this Electra?” He put out his hand, and she laid hers in the waiting palm. She felt bound to something by the magnetic grasp. The certainty was not weakened by any

He deprecated that.

"He has an enormous affection for me, if you like," he owned, "but influence! My dear young lady, I could n't influence a nature like that. I'm nowhere beside it. All I could hope for is that it would think some of the things I think, feel some of the things I feel. Then we could get on together."

Billy Stark, coming in at the door, thought that sounded like poppycock, but Electra knew it was the wisdom of the chosen. She rose and indicated Billy. "You know Mr. Stark?"

felt the same.

Madam Fulton came in then. She had removed the traces of past emotion, but with the red still burning in her cheeks she looked very pretty. MacLeod greeted her with an extreme deference, which presently slipped into the ordinary courtesy of man to woman as he found she had no desire to exact any special consideration. They went out to luncheon with that air of accelerated life which contributes to the success of an occasion, and then MacLeod talked. Rose sat silent, looking on with a sad indifference, as at a scene she had witnessed many

In

times before, to no good end, and Madam Fulton listened rather satirically. But Electra and Peter glowed and could hardly eat, and MacLeod addressed himself chiefly to them. Now he did exactly what was expected of him. The brotherhood of man was his theme, and it was no mere effusion of sympathetic propaganda. His memory was his immense storehouse behind emotion, his armory. He could mobilize facts and statistics until the ordinary mind owned itself cowed by them. When they rose from the table, the millennium was imminent, and it had been brought by the sword. At the library door, Peter, beside Electra for an instant, irrepressibly seized her hand, as it hung by her side, and gave it passionate pressure. stantly she looked at him, responsive. The sympathy they lacked in their personal relation sprang to life under MacLeod's trumpeting. Electra was in a glow, and Peter, with a surprised delight, felt all his old allegiance to his imperial lady. MacLeod would not sit down. "I must catch my train," he said. There was outcry at once from two quarters. He was not to return to the city. He was to stay here, Peter declared. It was absurd, it was unthinkable that he should do anything else. MacLeod took it with a friendly smile and the air of deprecating such undeserved cordiality; but he looked at Electra, who was frankly beseeching him from brilliant eyes. It was settled finally that he should go back to his hotel for a day or two, see some newspaper men and meet a few public engagements, and then return for a little stay.

"Get your hat," he said to Rose, in affectionate suggestion, "and walk with me to the station."

And as it became apparent that father and daughter had had no time for intimate talk, they were allowed to go away together, Peter following them with impetuous stammering adjurations to MacLeod to rattle through his business and come back. When they were

They walked along in silence for a moment, and she felt the return of old aches, old miseries he always summoned for her. In the first moment of seeing him, she always recurred to the other days when to be with him was to be in heaven. Nobody ever had so blest a time as she in the simple charm of his good-will. No matter what she was doing, for him to call her, to hold out a finger, had been enough. She would forsake the world and run, and she never remembered the world again until he loosed the spell. It was broken now, she thought, effectively, but still at these first moments her heart yearned back to the old playgrounds, the old lure.

ing

"What did she call you," he was ask- "Madam Fulton? Mrs. Tom ?" "Yes," said Rose, with a quiet bitterness, "Mrs. Tom."

"Have they accepted you?"

She raised her eyebrows and looked at him.

"You heard," she answered.

"Extraordinary people! Who is Electra? I could n't call her anything. Everybody was saying Electra."

"She is Madam Fulton's granddaughter. She and Peter are engaged."

"Ah! I'd forgotten that. I rather fancied it was you with Peter."

She summoned the resolution to meet him bluntly.

"Don't do that, please. Don't assume anything of the sort about me."

He went on with unbroken good humor. She had never seen him angry, but the possibility of it, some hidden force suspected in him, quelled her, of late, when she considered the likelihood of rousing it.

"No, of course not," he said, with his habitual geniality. "Why aren't you staying with them?"

She temporized, only from the general certainty that it was unsafe for him to know too much.

"Peter asked me to stay there. His grandmother is very kind. I like her." "Ah! Have these people money?" "What people?"

"Electra. Tom's family in general." "I don't know."

"They must have. They have the air. Will they do anything for you?"

Her face contracted. The look of youth had fled and left her haggard. "I have not accepted anything." "Have they offered it ?" "No."

"There! you see! No doubt they will." "Why did you come over here?" she cried irrepressibly.

But he ignored the question.

"The prince is much disturbed about you," he volunteered, throwing it into the talk as if it were of no particular validity, but only interesting as one chose to take it.

"Ah! that's why you came!"

"I saw him two weeks ago, in Milan. He was greatly troubled. I had to own that you had left Paris without seeing me, without even telling me your whereabouts."

"Then-" said Rose.

She knew what else had happened. The prince had urged, "Go over to America. Influence her. Bring her back with you." But this she did not say. The unbroken cordiality of his attitude always made his best defense. If she had ever known harshness from him, she might brave it again. But many forces between them were as yet unmeasured. She did not dare.

"You must remember," he said, with the air of talking over reasonably something to which he was not even persuading her, "the prince is exceptionally placed. He could give you a certain position."

"I have a certain position now. Don't forget that, will you?" She seemed to speak from an extremity of distaste.

"He offers a private marriage. He is not likely to set it aside; the elder line is quite assured, so far as anything can be in this world. Besides" he looked at her winningly - "you believe in love. He loves you."

"I did believe in it," she said haltingly, as if the words were difficult. "I should find it hard now to tell what I believe."

"Well!" He took off his hat to invite the summer breeze. It stirred the hair above his noble forehead, and Rose, in a sickness at old affection dead, knew, without glancing at him, how he looked, and marveled that any one so admirably made could seem to her so persistently ranged with evil forces. Yet, she reflected, it was only because he arrogated power to himself. He put his hands upon the wheels of life and jarred them. "Well! I believe in it. Is n't that enough for you?"

"Not now, not now!" She had to answer, though it might provoke stern issues. "Once it would have been. There is nothing you could have told me that I would not have believed. But you delivered me over to the snare of the fowler." Grandmother had read those words in her morning chapter, and they had stayed in her ears as meaning precisely this thing. He had known that it was a snare, and he had cast her into it. She turned her moved face upon him. "We must n't talk about these things. Nobody knows where it will end. And you must n't talk to me about the prince."

"If it does n't mean anything to you, would n't it move you if I told you it meant something to me?"

"What?"

"It would mean a great deal if you formed an alliance there."

She answered bitterly.

"You are humorous. Alliance! An alliance is for princes. There are other words for these things you propose. I