impulses running through Dr. Blake, his sense of humor spurted a moment to the fore. He found himself struggling to keep back a smile at the picture of some fat old woman in a dressing gown simulating hysteria that she might ruin a love affair. He was hard put to make his voice sound sincere, as he answered:

"Yes, all."

"She said: 'Child, you are more influenced by this man than you know. It is not the great love, but it is dangerous. You are to be the great Light only after you have put aside a great earthly love. This vessel from which I am speaking'—she meant Aunt Paula of course—'yielded to an earthly love. That is why she is less than you will be. Would you imperil truth?' It was something like that, only more. Ah, do you see now?"

"I see," said his sense of humor, "that your Aunt Paula is a most unlimited fakir."

"I see," said his voice, "but do you believe it?"

"I've so much cause to believe that I can never tell you all. After Aunt Paula came out of it, I told her what Martha had said. She was dear and sympathetic. She put me to sleep; and when I woke, I was resigned. I did not see him alone again. Now I understand more clearly. When I have had that earthly love and put it aside, when I have proved myself to my Guides—then the voices will come to me. Martha has repeated it to Aunt Paula whenever I have gone away from home. She repeated it before I came up here—"

"They had cause to repeat it," he took her up fiercely; "cause to repeat it!"

"I—I'm afraid so. But how should I know? I looked at you—and it seemed right, everlastingly right, that I should know you. And then I did—so suddenly and easily that it made me shudder afterwards for fear the test had come—the agony which I have been afraid to face. Ah, it's bold saying this!" She drooped forward, and her porcelain skin turned to rose.

Blake sat breathless, dumb. Never had she seemed so far away from him as then; never had she seemed so desirable. He struggled with his voice, but no word came; and it was she who spoke first.

"Now I know—it is the agony!"

At this admission, all the love and all the irritation in him came up together into a force which drove him on. They were alone; none other looked; but had all the world been looking, he might have done what he did. He rose to his feet, he dropped both his hands on her shoulders, he devoured her sapphirine eyes with his eyes, and his voice was steel as he spoke:

"You love me. You have always loved me. In spite of everything, you will marry me! You will say it before you are done with me!"

He stopped suddenly, for her eyelids were drooping. Had he not been a physician, he would have said that she was going to faint. But her color did not change. And suddenly she was speaking in a low tone which mocked his, but with no expression nor intonations:

"I love you. I have always loved you. In spite of everything, I shall marry you."

He dropped his hands from her shoulders with a bewildered impulse to seize her in his arms; then the publicity of the place came to him, and he drew his hands back. On that motion, her eyes opened and she flashed a little away from him.

"What did I say?" she exclaimed; "and why—oh, don't touch me—don't come near—can't you see it makes it harder for me to renounce?"

"But you said—"

"I said before you touched me—ah, don't touch me again—that I should make it hard—the harder I make it, the more I shall grow—but I can't bear so much!" She had risen, was moving away.

"Let's walk," he said shortly; and then, "Even if you put me aside, won't you keep me in your life?"

"The Guides will tell me," she answered simply.

"But I may see you—call on you in the city?"

"Unless the Guides forbid."

They were walking side by side now; they had turned from the sunken arena, which surrounded the tennis court, toward the house. Blake saw that the driver of the Mountain House stage was approaching. He waved a yellow envelope as he came on:

"Been looking for you, Miss Markham. Telegram. Charges paid."

Dr. Blake stepped away as Annette, in the preliminary flutter of fear with which a woman always receives a telegram, tore open the envelope and read the enclosure. Without a word, she handed it over to him. It read:

ANNETTE MARKHAM:

Take next train home. Advice of Martha. Wire arrival.

PAULA MARKHAM.

"Perhaps the Guides know," she said, smiling but quivering, too. "Perhaps they're going to make it easier for me."

IV

HIS FIRST CALL

Dear Mr. Blake (read the letter): It was nice to get your note and to know that you are back in town so soon. Of course you must come to see me. I want Aunt Paula to know that all the complimentary things I have said about you are true. We are never at home in the conventional sense—but I hope Wednesday evening will do.

Cordially,

ANNETTE MARKHAM.

He had greeted this little note with all the private follies of lovers. Now for the hundredth time, he studied it for significances, signs, pretty intimacies; and he found positively nothing about it which he did not like. True, he failed to extract any important information from the name of the stationer, which he found under the flap of the envelope; but on the other hand the paper itself distinctly pleased him. It was note-size and of a thick, unfeminine quality. He approved of the writing—small, fine, legible, without trace of seminary affectation. And his spirits actually rose when he observed that it bore no coat-of-arms—not even a monogram.

At last, with more flourishes of folly, he put the note away in his desk and inspected himself in the glass. To the credit of his modesty, he was thinking not of his white tie—fifth that he had ruined in the process of dressing—nor yet of the set of his coat. He was thinking of Mrs. Paula Markham and the impression which these gauds and graces might make upon her.

"What do you suppose she's like?" he asked inaudibly of the correct vision in the glass.

He had exhausted all the possibilities—a fat, pretentious medium whom Annette's mind transformed by the alchemy of old affection into a presentable personage; a masculine and severe old woman with the "spook" look in her eyes; a fluttering, affected precieuse, concealing her quackery by chatter. Gradually as he thought on her, the second of these hypotheses came to govern—he saw her as the severe and masculine type. This being so, what tack should she take?

The correct vision in the glass vouchsafed no answer to this. His mood persisted as his taxicab whirled him into the region which borders the western edge of Central Park. The thing assumed the proportions of a great adventure. No old preparation for battle, no old packings to break into the unknown dark, had ever given him quite such a sense of the high, free airs where romance blows. He was going on a mere conventional call; but he was going also to high and thrilling possibilities.

The house was like a thousand other houses of the prosperous middle class, distinguishable only by minor differences of doors and steps and area rails, from twenty others on the same block. He found himself making mystery even of this. Separate houses in New York require incomes.

"Evidently it pays to deal in spooks," he said to himself.

His first glimpse of the interior, his subsequent study of the drawing-room while the maid carried in his name, made more vivid this impression. The taste of the whole thing was evident; but the apartment had besides a special flavor. He searched for the elements which gave that impression. It was not the old walnut furniture, ample, huge, upholstered in a wine-colored velours which had faded just enough to take off the curse; it was not the three or four passable old paintings. The real cause came