commission which, brilliantly executed, would make him forever secure. In the meantime, because he was an honest workman, he gave to his few clients the best he had, a really fine best, worthy of wider notice. And because he grew daily more in love with his art and proposed to be found ready when his great chance came, he put in his spare hours studying hard, making sketches—he had a pretty knack for that and might have become a third-rate painter—of the numberless ideas that floated to him out of tobacco clouds or down from a moonlit sky or across a music-filled room. Sometimes he would tear the sketches to bits. But sometimes, lingering lovingly over one, he would know a deep thrill.

"Why, this," he would exclaim, "this is good. Oh!" hugging himself, "they'll have to come to me yet."

On the strength of this conclusion he would allow himself some special extravagance.

When he was twenty-seven he was making about nine hundred a year, spending it all as it came, and owed more than five hundred dollars.

Then he met Shirley Lord.

It was at a dinner given by the Jim Blaisdells, whose guest she was.
Mrs. Jim introduced them.

"Shirley dear, this is our Davy Quentin. As a special favor—to each of you—I'm putting you together to-night. You have just a minute now to get acquainted." And Mrs. Jim fluttered away.

David spent most of that minute looking with a thrill—much the sort he felt when he was pleased with his sketches—into a pair of blue eyes that smiled at him out of the prettiest, sweetest, kindest face he thought he had ever seen. And it was very pretty and sweet and kind just then, as she looked at him with the friendliness he always inspired. Framing the face was a lot of wavy brown hair with golden lights dancing in it, her neck and shoulders were slender but softly rounded, the figure hinted at by the soft clinging gown was trim and girlish. But those were details that he drank in later.

He heaved a sigh, so patently one of content with his lot that she laughed outright. To laugh well is a gift from the gods.

"You're not a bit as I thought you would be."

"How did you think I should be?" stammered David, trying to grasp the fact that this dainty creature had been thinking of him at all.

"Why, grim and haughty and altogether overwhelming. You know, you're supposed to be rather wonderful."

David felt anxiously for his head.

"Does it expand so easily?"

"I just wanted to be sure it was still there. I can see it would be easy to lose it."

She laughed again.

It is probable that they talked a polite amount with their respective neighbors. But if so, they regarded it as untimely interruption of the real business of the evening. It was amazing the number of things they found to discuss and they discussed them so earnestly and withal, as it seemed to them, so wittily and wisely that they were blissfully unaware of the significant smiles going around the table. When the coffee was served, David surveyed his cup stupidly.

"Does it strike you," he inquired, "that they've hurried this dinner out of all reason?"

"It has been the usual length, I believe."

"Funny—I've a hazy recollection of fish—and of an ice just now—but entrée and salad and the rest are a total blank."

"Very funny!" she agreed.

"But the queerest of all—" He broke off, with a laugh that did not quite reach his eyes.

"Yes?" she queried provocatively, knowing that one of his daring bits was coming.

"The queerest of all," he repeated, "is that you should turn out to be—you."

"No queerer than—" Then she broke off, with a laugh that did reach her eyes.

The next afternoon they played golf. It was at the fifth tee that they abandoned the last pretense of formality. She topped her drive wretchedly; the ball rolled a scant ten feet.

"Oh, David!" she cried. "Did you ever see anything so awful?"

"Many times," answered David, who was looking at her, not at the ball. "I've often wondered," he mused raptly, "how 'David' would sound, set to music."

He was rewarded by her rippling, musical laugh. "You say the absurdest things—and the nicest."

They pursued her recalcitrant ball until it led them, by many zigzags, to an old elm that had upset more than one good game. But they did not swear at it. They sat down under its generous shade, David lighted a cigarette and they gave themselves to a more agreeable exercise. They pretended to define it.

"I suppose," Shirley broke a brief intimate silence, "people think we're having a violent flirtation. But we're not, are we?"

"Certainly not," said David with emphasis.

"They couldn't understand. We're just naturally meant to be good friends and it didn't take us an age to find that out."

"Yes," said David slowly.

"Tell me about yourself."

He tried to make it interesting but when he came to the point there was really little to tell.

"But that isn't all. You haven't told me why people are so confident of your future."

"I don't know that. Sometimes I wonder whether they've the right to be confident."

"You've been very successful, haven't you?"

He shook his head. "I'm still poor—so poor you'd probably call it indecent—with my way to make. It seems a very slow way, too."

There was a hint of disappointment in the quick glance she turned upon him.

"Have I lost caste?"

"No. I was just wondering— But you're going to be successful, aren't you? Everybody can't be mistaken in you. Tell me what you want to do."

So he told her of his love for his work, of his studies and sketches, of the beautiful churches that he hoped he should some day build.

It was early October; which is not unimportant. Before them opened a vista of wooded hills, tinted by the first frosts dull yellows and maroons, here and there a flash of rich crimson. A thin haze lay over the land, violet in the distance, about them an almost imperceptible golden. The voices of other players came softly to them, subdued and lazy as an echo. Fading hillsides, dying leaves, blue horizons—autumn, too, has its wistful charm, as potent as spring to bring young hearts together.

"Everybody can't be mistaken," she repeated. "All those things you will do. I feel it, too. It's something you can't explain. You know a man is big, just as you know a woman is good— And you couldn't lose caste with me. I'm poor, too."

He swept her with an incredulous glance that took in the beautiful, soft, hand-knit sweater jacket, the white flannel skirt with its air of having been fashioned by an expensive tailor, the white buckskins and bit of white silk stocking. He knew girls, daughters of rich fathers, who did not wear silk stockings for golfing.

She caught his glance. "Mostly presents," she answered it, "from an aunt who has more money than she knows what to do with. The rest is just splurge. It's quite true about my poverty. Ever since we were left alone Maizie and I have had to work. We could have gone to live with my aunt, but we wanted to be independent, to make our own living. And we've made it, though," laughingly, "we've been pretty hard up sometimes. So you see, I'm not a butterfly but just a working girl on her vacation. Have I