answered heartily. “You have chosen the one word to be applied to Madeline Elton, both to her spirit and to her face—not thrilling, perhaps, but satisfying, which is better. She and Dick were inseparables through their childhood. It is rather a taken-for-granted affair, you know.”

“I guessed as much, though Dick never said anything.”

There was something so confidential and kindly in her manner that Norris forgot his awkwardness and felt moved to confidence in return.

“Dick was born to all good things,” he went on. “I sometimes wonder how that feels.” Then, seeing that she glanced at him inquiringly: “Dick always seems to me one who needs only to stand still, and Fortuna takes pains to hunt him up and offer him her choicest wares. Life looks to him more like a birthday party than like a battle-field. I say it not in envy, but with the awe of one who has had to scrabble and who sees endless scrabbling ahead. But I believe part of the charm that I feel about Dick is his manifest predestination to good luck.”

“One piece of his luck, if I am not mistaken, is in your coming here. There is no friend like a college friend for every-day wear,” she answered kindly.

“Well, I owe my position here to him,” Norris went on. “When he found that I had an uncle back in Connecticut who owned a share in the St. Etienne Star, he began to pull wires both at that end and this to get me a place on the editorial staff. I’m afraid that nothing but wires would have got it for me. So here I am making my first bow to society under the shadow of his cloak.”

“Of course you came here.”

“What, really, is Mr. Early?”

“Apostle, expounder of the universe, business man, prophet.”

Norris laughed.

“He’s our display window. The way in which he manages to keep a little lion always roaring on the bargain-table astonishes us all every day. And when he runs short of foreign lions he roars a bit himself. Privately, I think he’s more entertaining than the imported article. St. Etienne would be merely a western city without him.

“Now,” she went on, “I’m going to introduce you to some other girls. To me, as to Dick, Miss Elton may be the bright particular star, but she is not the only light.”

So Miss Elton and Percival were left alone in the crowd.

“Madeline,” said the young man, “does this getting through college make you feel as though you had suddenly had your cellars taken away and your attics left foundationless in space? The question is ‘what next?’ That’s what I used to ask you in the good old days when we played mumbly-peg together. What shall we play now?”

“I know what I shall play. There is home, with mother enraptured to have me at her beck and call again; and, of course, there are musical and social ‘does’. They are going to be such fun that I do not know if I shall have room to tuck in a little study. But I suppose you must have a harder game. Yes, you must.”

“And are you so contented with the dead level? I fancied you were going to be ambitious.”

She turned her head and looked out through the narrow mullioned window beside her as though to avoid his eyes, but she answered quietly:

“If I have any ambitions, they are not very imposing. Let’s talk about yours; or rather let’s not talk about yours here. There are too many people and too much Swami. We are out at the lake, at the old summer home. Run out and dine with us to-morrow. Father is almost as anxious to see you as I am. You know you are his chief consolation for the fact that I am not a boy.”

“Thanks. May I bring Norris? Not that I’m afraid of the dark by myself, but that I really want you to know him.”

“Bring him of course, Dick,” she said without enthusiasm.

“And now do you suppose I can get you a cup of coffee or a sherbet?”

“Hush, I don’t know whether anything so vivid is possible. I believe, out of deference to Ram Juna, the refreshments are light almost to Nirvana. You can’t insult a man who lives on a few grains of rice by making him watch the herd gorge on salads and ices, can you?”

“And do you really believe that great mountain of flesh was built out of little grains of rice?”

“Mrs. Appleton—you remember her?”

“She has pounced on me already. She remembers that I waltz like a dream.”

“Dick,” said Miss Elton scornfully, “don’t make the mistake of considering yourself a plum. Mrs. Appleton told me that the Swami feeds on dew and flaming nebulae.”

“Humph!” said Dick, “I think he’s a big bronze fraud.”

“Oh, come, men may be great without playing foot-ball,” she laughed.

“Well, he’s not for me. I can believe in almost any kind of a prophet except one that works miracles.”

“Who knows? The Swami may be the molder of your destiny,” said Madeline gaily, with youth’s lightness in referring to the vague future.

“He may; but I’d lay long odds against it.”

“I must be going.” Miss Elton rose. “The crowd is thinning, and Mrs. Lenox looks impressively in my direction. We are going out together on the train. Their new country place is near us, you know. And you, ungrateful one, I suspect, have not even spoken to Mr. Early yet. Go and ‘make your manners,’ like a good boy. I’ll expect you to-morrow afternoon. Mr. Norris, Dick has promised to bring you with him to dinner to-morrow. Till then, good-by.”

“Come, Ellery, we’ll face the music, now that the real attractions are gone,” said Dick.

Mr. Early extended two hands, ponderous in proportion to the rest of his body, in fatherly greeting.

“Ah, Percival, my dear fellow, so you are done with Yale and back again in St. Etienne? I welcome you out of the fetters of mere bookishness into the freedom of real life, where it is man’s business to serve, and not to absorb.”

Dick blushed guiltily as several surrounding ladies turned their lorgnettes on him, but Mr. Early went on, undisturbed and very audible:

“I do not introduce you to Swami Ram Juna, because introductions belong to the world of conventionalities, and he lives in that world where real human relations are the only things that count; but I put your hand in his, in token of the contact in which your spirit may meet his great soul.”

“Very good of you, I’m sure,” murmured Dick, as the Swami bent his head and gave him a penetrating look.

“You, too, then, are a seeker?” Ram Juna inquired in a low tone, but with his delicate and distinct enunciation.

“Ah—I hope so,” Dick answered hastily, and with an evident desire to push the topic no further. “And this, Mr. Early, is my old chum, Norris, who has come West to be on the editorial staff of the Star.”

“The Star? It is the symbol of illumination. Is then your Star devoted to the enlightenment of mankind?” asked Ram Juna, transferring his fixed gaze.

“In a sense—yes,” Norris faltered with a swift guilty recollection of certain head-lines in last night’s edition.

“He who writes must think. He who thinks goes below the surface. He who goes below the surface is moving toward the center,” said the Swami oracularly.

Mr. Early’s broad face expanded into a benevolent smile, and an oncoming instalment swept the young men away.

“Does Mr. Early learn his remarks by heart?” asked Norris.

“I don’t know. But let us be seekers. Let us seek dinner, and fresh air. Give me fresh air—anything but Nirvana!”