unlimited expenditure had devised for her, penniless Perdita Carey, all this beauty and luxury. She had only stipulated timidly that she might be environed in her favorite rose color, a mere suggestion for those who had the matter in charge. It was enough. Her bed chamber bloomed with the pale but vivid flush of pink roses, La France, accentuated with cool, suave, silver notes, like the delicate, contrasted phrasing of a musical theme. The result of color and arrangement was youthful, joyous, spacious. Beyond a softly falling curtain, she caught a glimpse of her sitting-room. American beauty, a radiant spot with delicious water colors on the walls, bowls of roses, the sunshine falling through the windows, and shelves of books, each volume bound in creamy vellum.

In one of the long mirrors which reflected her graceful figure from every angle she saw through an opposite door her dressing-room and bath, with its elaborate appointments, more inviting and luxurious than any of which the proudest Roman beauty could have dreamed. She looked about her with a faint, strange smile. What a contrast were these cold and splendid rooms, not yet animated by her personality, to that little apartment with its two or three tiny chambers, high up under the roof, where she had lived and worked!

Then she turned back to her reflection in the mirror. It was extremely becoming to her, all this background of rose and silver. Perdita realized that as she unfastened the white flowers from her hair and let her long veil fall like a cloud about her. With a deft movement she caught it and tossed it on a chair for Olga to fold later. She slipped out of her wedding-gown next and laid it more carelessly still upon a couch. Then she leaned forward, her elbow on the dressing-table, her chin on her hand, and regarded herself steadily, that faint, strange smile still on her lips.

Well, she had fulfilled her destiny, justified Eugene Gresham's prophecy. She heard his words to her, spoken the last time she had seen him, three months before, as plainly as if his voice still rang in her ears.

"Perdita, your destiny is written on your face. It includes marrying a millionaire and having your portrait painted by me."

Fateful words! She had just married the millionaire, but even here, upon the threshold of this new life, she was constrained to halt a moment and cast one backward glance, "just for the old love's sake."

It was the night before Eugene Gresham sailed for Europe to paint the portraits of "Princessin, Contessin and high Altessin." Again she awaited him. Again she heard his step on the stair without, a quick, light step with an odd halt in it.

He was coming, and her heart beat. How it beat as she stood there breathless beside the window!

"Perdita!" Eugene's voice. He was across the room in a flash, both her hands in his. "Here, let me see you in the light." He drew her toward a lamp. "Two years, two years since we have met, and me wasting time painting in the desert places when I might have been with you. Time is not in the Far East. Ah, my cousin!" (the relationship was remote) he sighed. "Why, as I live," with a quick change of tone, "you've got another dimple, and that makes you a new and lovelier Perdita."

She flushed adorably. "How nice and southern," she cried with an attempt at lightness, "and how exactly like you, just like the old 'Gene."

"The old 'Gene," his eyes still holding hers, "has never changed."

"How—how—are the pictures going?" withdrawing her hands from his.

"Beautifully!" he said carelessly. "The glassy eyes of the millionaires are all turning toward me, and I have more commissions to make beautiful on canvas their pug-nosed, fat-faced wives than I care to accept. Those ladies hail me as a great psychological artist. Their mirrors are so cruel to them that when my brushes flatter them they say that I paint their souls; strip away the husk of the flesh and reveal enduring loveliness."

He struck a match to light a cigarette and then hastily shielded it with his cupped hand from the breeze which blew through the open window. The light flared into his down-bent face, bringing out its dissonances almost grotesquely in that small, momentary flash. Pick Gresham to pieces and he was incontrovertibly convicted of sheer ugliness, but the fact bothered him not at all. He knew that few ever arrived at the cool, dispassionate frame of mind regarding him where they were capable of that exhaustive analysis known as picking to pieces. He was slender and rather small of stature, not more than medium height. One shoulder was noticeably higher than the other and he walked with a slight limp, the result of an injury received in boyhood. Coarse, blue-black hair with a sort of crinkle in it stood out from his head like a cloud. His skin was swarthy, his features irregular, even his eyes, dark eyes, were only occasionally brilliant. But he might have been appreciably uglier, almost as hideous as the Yellow Dwarf or Beauty's Beast,—it would have mattered no more than his present lack of beauty, and well he knew it. His was the magic gift of glamour, and all the dissonances and inharmonies of appearance as well as of character seemed but the italics emphasizing his charm. His mind was supple and flexible, his wits nimble, even subtle. He was as vivid, as veering, as fascinating as flame.

His match, the third he had struck, blew out before it had lighted his cigarette, and he threw it away with a petulant gesture. He did not answer her, as he was again attempting to light his cigarette, this time with success. Then he began to saunter about the room.

In spite of her penury Perdita had yet managed to invest her little workshop with both daintiness and charm. The walls were hung with pink and white chintz and here and there were bits of fragile china and rare old silver on claw-legged mahogany tables, while from dim canvases in tarnished silver frames smiled the sweet, dark eyes of haughty southern beauties of a generation unused to life's struggles.

"You really saved some of the best things from that hideous auction, didn't you?" picking up a bit of china to scrutinize it more carefully. "I was horrified when I heard of it across the world, several months after it was all over. If I'd only been there to buy the whole lot in. Plucky little girl you were, Perdita, to come on here and manage to keep the gaunt, gray wolf at bay."

"What else was there for me to do?" she asked without turning her head. "Aunt died, the place had to go. As for the wolf, if you look sharp, Eugene, you may see his paws thrusting under this door."

In the center of the room was a large table covered with paint brushes, colors, a litter of candle shades, cotillion favors and cards in various stages of completion. Eugene carefully cleared a space on that edge of the table nearest Perdita's chair, and perched upon it, looking down at her with a smile.

"My stars, Dita!" he cried with the truest conviction, "you are a beauty! The moment I return, I mean to paint you again. And this time I'll set the world afire. Do you remember how many portraits I have made of you? Why, just to see you brings back my boyhood,—the hopes, the struggles, the effort, the haunted days, the feverish nights. I used to think, 'If I can just learn how to get this effect, I'll know the whole secret.' I've got past that now. There's always a new and more difficult riddle every day. But Dita, Dita, the dreams of my youth you recall!"

The smile died from her face. Her eyes grew wistful. "The dreams of our youth," she repeated. "I'm young yet; but they haunt me. They were beautiful dreams down there on that gray, old river. Can't you shut your eyes, Eugene, and see the terraces sloping down to the water, the lovely, neglected garden with its tangle of roses and jasmine?"

"Do I remember?" His eyes looked deep into hers. "I swear I never smell jasmine without thinking of the old place and you. Perdita, do you ever think what life might have been for us if it hadn't been for our accursed