a constant state of interested amusement. Such advice as he offered went far in preserving her unsophistication.

And so the late November days found him enjoying life with a decidedly added zest in things, though his Immortals claimed him the moment he was left to his own resources and at times he even became entirely oblivious to the eddies in the lives around him. One cold afternoon he sat in his chair, buried eyes-deep in one of his old books, while across from him sat Phoebe and Andrew Sevier, bending together over a large map spread out before them. There were stacks of blueprints at their elbows and their conference had evidently been an interesting one.

"It's all wonderful, Andrew," Phoebe was saying, "and I'm proud indeed that they have accepted your solution of such an important construction problem; but why must you go back? Aren't the commissions offered you here, the plays and the demand for your writing enough? Why not stay at home for a year or two at least?"

"It's the call of it, Phoebe," he answered. "I get restless and there's nothing for it but the hard work of the camp. It's lonely but it has its compensations, for the visions come down there as they don't here. You know how I like to be with all of you; and it's home—but the depression gets more than I can stand at times and I must go. You understand better than the rest, I think, and I always count on you to help me off." As he spoke he rested his head on his hands and looked across the table into the fire. His eyes were somber and the strong lines in his face cut deep with a grim melancholy.

Phoebe's frank eyes softened as they looked at him. They had grown up together, friends in something of a like fortune and she understood him with a frank comradeship that comforted them both and went far to the distraction of young David Kildare who, as he said, trusted Andrew but looked for every possible surprising maneuver in the conduct of Phoebe. And because she understood Andrew Phoebe was silent for a time, tracing the lines on his map with a pencil.

"Then you'll have to go," she said softly at last, "but don't stay so long again." She glanced across at the top of the major's head which showed a rampant white lock over the edge of his book. "We miss you; and you owe it to some of us to come back oftener from now on."

"I always will," answered Andrew, quickly catching her meaning and smiling with a responsive tenderness in a glance at the absorbed old gentleman around the corner of the table. "It is harder to go this time than ever, in a way; and yet the staying's worse. I'm giving myself until spring, though I don't know why. I—"

Just then from the drawing-room beyond there came a crash of soft chords on the piano and David's voice rose high and sweet across the rooms. He had gone to the piano to sing for Caroline who never tired of his negro melodies and southern love songs. He also had a store of war ballads with which it delighted him to tease and regale her, but to-day his mood had been decidedly on the sentimental vein.

"I want no stars in Heaven to guide me,
I need no………………….
……but, oh, the kingdom of my heart, love,
Lies within thy loving arms…."

His voice dropped a note lower and the rest of the distinctly enunciated words failed to reach through the long rooms. Phoebe also failed to catch a quick breath that Andrew drew as he began stacking a pile of blue-prints into a leather case.

"David Kildare," remarked the old major as he looked up over his book, "makes song the vehicle of expression of as many emotions in one half-hour as the ordinary man lives through in a lifetime. Had you not better attend to the safeguarding of Caroline Darrah's unsophistication, Phoebe?"

"I wouldn't interrupt him for worlds, Major," laughed Phoebe as she arose from her chair. "I'm going to slip by the drawing-room and hurry down to that meeting of the Civic Improvement Association from which I hope to get at least a half column. Andrew'll go in and see to them."

"Never!" answered Andrew promptly with a smile. "I'm going to beat a retreat and walk down with you. The major must assume that responsibility. Good-by!" And in a moment they had both made their escape, to the major's vast amusement.

For the time being the music in the drawing-room had stopped and David and Caroline were deep in an animated conversation.

"The trouble about it is that I am about to have my light put out," David was complaining as he sat on the piano-stool, glaring at a vase of unoffending roses on a table. "Being a ray of sunshine around the house for a sick poet is no job for a runabout child like me."

"But he's so much better now, David, that I should think you would be perfectly happy. Though of course you are still a little uneasy about him." As Caroline Darrah spoke she swayed the long-stemmed rose she held in her hand and tipped it against one of its mates in the vase.

"Uneasy, nothing! There's not a thing in the world the matter with him; ribs are all in commission and his collar-bone hitched on again. It's just a case of moonie sulks with him. He never was the real glad boy, but now he runs entirely to poetry and gloom. He won't go anywhere but over here to chew book-rags with the major or to read goo to Phoebe, which she passes on to you. Wish I'd let him die in the swamps; chasing away to Panama for him was my mistake, I see." And David ruffled a young rose that drooped confidingly over toward him.

"Why did he ever go to Panama? Why does he build bridges and things?
Other people like you and me can do that sort of thing; but he—," and
Caroline Darrah raised her eyes full of naive questioning.

"Heavens, woman, poetry never in the world would grub-stake six feet of husky man! But that's just like you and Phoebe and all the other women. You would like to feed me to the alligators, but the poet must sit in the shade and chew eggs and grape juice. You trample on my feelings, child," and David sighed plaintively.

Caroline eyed him a moment across the rose she held to her lips, then laughed delightedly.

"Indeed, indeed, I couldn't stand losing you, David, nor could Phoebe. Don't imagine it!" And Caroline confessed her affection for him with the naďveté with which a child offers a flower.

The absolute entente cordiale which had existed between her and Phoebe from the moment Mrs. Buchanan had presented them to each other in the dusk-shadowed library, had been extended to include David Kildare. He was duly appreciative of her almost appealing friendship, chaffed her about the three governors, depended upon her to further his tumultuous suit, admired her beauty, insisted upon it in season and out, and initiated her into the social intricacies of his gay set with the greatest glee.

"I don't trust you one little bit, Caroline Darrah Brown," David broke in on her moment's silent appreciation of him and his friendliness. "You look at him kinder partial-like, too."

"Oh, one must admire him, his poems are so lovely! I have watched for them from the first one years ago. Do you remember the one where he—"

"Don't remember a single line of a single one, and don't want to!
Phoebe's always quoting them at me. She's got a book of 'em. See if I
don't smash him up some day if I have to listen to much more of it."
David's face was a study in the contradictions of a tormented grin.

Caroline eyed him again for a moment across the rose and then they both laughed delightedly. But David was for the pressing of his point just the same.

"Dear Daughter of the Three," he pleaded, "can't you