Fairchild's eye twinkled a little. His fingers had barely touched the end of the cigar that rested in his waistcoat pocket. He glanced about him with a little shake

"Selected a single rose"

"I should like to take you away from it all," he said.

"From this!" She made a quick movement, almost a gesture of protection, toward the room. "I thought we had settled all that." She spoke a little stiffly.

"No," he removed his cigar and looked thoughtfully at the tip,-"we did n't settle everything, did we?"

"But you understood-" She lifted a swift look to him.

"I understood, yes. You will not marry me."

The fire blazed suddenly, and a crash of sparks went scurrying up the chimney. She leaned forward to adjust the sticks. It surprised her to see that her hand, reaching to the tongs, was trembling.

"Let me do it," he said.

She relinquished the tongs, and he replaced the wood, busying himself with

Her quick glance noted the movement with a look of surprise. He was evidently expecting to stay! But the quiet restfulness in his face touched some chord in her, and she moved the drop-light a little and took up the knitting that lay beside it. "Would you like to smoke?" she asked casually.

"Here?" He cast a humorous glance behind him, and she smiled.

"It is permitted," she said dryly.

"Gracious lady!" He leaned forward with a match to the hearth, and the smoke from his lighted cigar drifted slowly up.

It touched the books, brushing carelessly along the leather bindings and obscuring gilt letters and titles; it circled about Gabrielle Eaton and even seemed to tangle itself in the needles and the light. wool that played about them in the firelight; and mounting to the ceiling, it grew tenuous and disappeared.

And John Fairchild watched it with a quiet smile.

The drop-light shadowed her face; but the firelight was playing on it as it bent above her needles.

Presently she looked up.
He nodded quietly.

which the flames played. He kept the tongs in his hands, bending forward to the hearth, his back a little turned.

"I meant what I said," he remarked quietly.

She stared her surprise, and a little fear of him had come into her look.

The man's strong face had turned and was watching her. Then he seemed to put himself and his wishes aside.

"Do you like it? Do you like all this?" He waved his hand at the self-contained room, and the gesture seemed to include the campus and the college world outside. "Do you like it?" he demanded. "Does it satisfy you?"

She shook her head with a smile. Something that had frightened her for a moment in his face had disappeared.

"No, I don't like it-altogether; but I do not know anything I should like better."

"Think!" he said. "Be a sport! What would you choose, in all the world, if you could have it?"

She motioned to the door. "When I think of them it seems worth while. You could never guess the waste there is in a place like this-the wicked waste of it!" She caught her breath.

"Tell me," he said gently.

And while she told him he listened with close attention, close attention, smoking thoughtfully. And his thought ran ahead and seemed to meet her at every turn. His comprehension startled her.

"You do understand!" she cried.

"I understand business. I know when a plant is behind the times," he said dryly. "And there is nothing I can do, so I live with my girls. That at least is worth while-what I give and receive from them."

They were silent a little.

"You might start one of your own," he suggested.

"One what?" "College."

She laughed shortly.

an evening you can call your own." He motioned to the closed door.

Her lips parted.

"You don't understand."

"I am trying to."

"They are all that makes it endurable."

"Why not? I will finance it. If I cannot have you, my money is of no particular value. All you can do with money is to buy pictures or endow a hospital or a college. I'd rather endow you."

She gazed gazed at the vision a minute. Then she shook her head.

"It would n't be fair." "Oh, I am not altogether unselfish."

She cast a swift look at him.

"You would make terms?"

"Don't most millionaires make terms?" "Yes, unless they 're

dead. Sometimes they do even then," she said regretfully.

"I'll make only one term. This institution-"

She held up her hands, protesting.
"Well, school, college, whatever you

choose to call it, must be located in Dalton."

Her breath came with a cry of pleasure. "But I should love that!"

He

"So should I. So that 's settled." beamed on her, and she felt strangely shaken from the things about her. She seemed to be gazing through some window into a serene bit of country where through the trees a little river went its glimmering way.

She turned and looked at the man across the hearth.

"You really love me, don't you?" she said wonderingly.

"I really do," he replied in a matterof-fact tone. "Have you thought out your plans? Do you know what you want-buildings, laboratories, and all

that?"

She

She seemed still wrapped in the dream. "I don't know-yes. I was reading something the other day-" She got up and crossed to a stand for a book. knew where it lay, and her hand reached out to it, and paused. Her back was to the man by the fire. But as she lifted her eyes to the Florentine mirror above the stand she caught a glimpse of his face turned to her. There was hunger in it, and a look of quick suffering; all the businesslike indifference was swept away. She stood for a moment staring at it. Then her glance dropped to the book in her hand, and she stood turning the leaves idly. Wave after wave of unknown feeling swept over her, lifting her, engulfing her. The look in his face! She longed to take it in her hands and smooth it awayall the pain and repression in it. Not one of her girls, with eager questing for life, had stirred her as that glimpse of a man's face in the mirror on her wall.

She turned slowly, and faced the successful man of business.

She crossed to him quietly.
"This is the book," she said.
He reached out a hand for it.

With new eyes she saw that it was not quite steady as it reached to her.

"You want something like this?" he asked absently.

"Oh, no, not in the least like it!" she cried.

He looked up, surprised. She caught herself.

"It was reading it that gave me an idea. And when I went to get it just now I had -another idea."

"Yes?" He was feeling absently in his pocket for a pencil. She watched his

"Caught a glimpse of his face"

fingers nervously. Only the memory of the mirror held her. She threw out her hands a little impatiently.

"I did n't know you cared-like that!" she said.

She crossed to her chair and sat down, facing him almost sternly.

He stared at her. Then he got up and came over slowly.

"What do you mean, Gabrielle ?" He seemed very tall as she looked

up to him. She put up a hand.

"I'd like a school of my own better than this," she moved her hand a little, -"but more than anything in the world I want love." She said it swiftly under her breath.

"But I-I-love you!" He was clearly bewildered. He held himself in check. "I love you," he repeated. "I have n't done anything but tell you so for the last month."

"Oh-telling!" It was a little assent of scorn.

Again the swift look she had seen before swept his face, and she felt the grip of his hands on her shoulders.

She winced a little. Then she smiled, and the grip lightened.

"I am hurting you," he cried. "Don't you know I want to be hurt? What is life for?"

She reached up to his face and drew it

down to her, and all the wontedness of life seemed breaking up. She brushed a swift hand across her eyes.

His own searched them, unbelieving. "You-care!" he said under his breath. She nodded. A little smile came to her eyes.

"You-slow-incomprehensible creature!" she murmured.

"I! Slow! Well!" He was looking down at her with humorous eyes as he drew her toward him.

"And I might never have known!" she said softly. She glanced toward the mirror on the wall. "Looking-glass, lookingglass, that hangeth on the wall-"

"Whom in the wide world do you love best of all?" he quoted slowly. "I used to read it to you, Gabrielle, when we were children."

She nodded.

"All children love it. I have been so

foolish!" She said it with a little restful sigh.

"So you don't want your school?" His face was turned to her.

"Of course I want it-more than ever! We will have it together. I need you for it." A sudden thought touched her, and she looked at him.

"Do you know, I think I have been immensely selfish," she said slowly. "I have not for one moment thought of anything but myself and what I want!"

His answer was not perhaps what she expected. He bent to her and kissed her. Then his glance traveled about the perfect room and he smiled.

"Now you will be selfish for me," he said. "I may not always be able to live up to your selfishness; but I want it." And all the perfect room seemed a little shocked. But Gabrielle Eaton laughed

quietly.

HERE can be no doubt about the quiet, but steady, increase of interest in etching. This does not mean, however, that all people who look at etchings without being awed or bored, and with an appreciable amount of pleasure, can give an intelligent answer to the question, "What is an etching?" In fact, an attitude frequently encountered. even among admirers of the art is that of diffidence before the mysteries of processes technical.

And yet, when these processes are explained in simple, straightforward manner, the public shows an interest. The exhibition illustrating the making of an etching, held in the print gallery of the New York Public Library, drew thousands of visitors, many of whom had ap

parently had little or no previous knowledge of the subject.

This interest in methods is not only natural, but necessary. Appreciation of etching must be based in part on knowledge of the manner of production. In an art of any kind the medium-that is, the tool with which and the material from which a work of art is produced-must inevitably leave its impress on the result. Every medium has its limits and its possibilities; the artist must respect the one and avail himself to the full extent of his power of the other. Bracquemond once said that a work of graphic art must bear on its face, undisguised, the characteristics of the technic by which it was produced.

What wide diversity of expression can be given to one and the same medium may be seen in the case of etching by comparing the work of such men as Rembrandt and Jacque, Whistler and Bracquemond, Haden and Ostade, Meryon and Buhot, Breenberg and Brangwyn, Lalanne and Jongkind, Lepère and Zorn. Each of the two here coupled represent strong, sometimes antipodal, differences in method, in