class="pnext">"Stephen!"

"Well? Is it so impossible to conceive? Haven't you guessed I was going to ask it sooner or later?"

"No. Oh, Stephen, I wish you hadn't."

"Why? I don't expect the same kind of love you gave Syd. You couldn't give it, of course. That is past. But you are too young to have life stop altogether for you--too young and too lovely. Other men will ask it if I don't, and I--well, I want to get in ahead." He laughed boyishly, but his eyes, which were grave enough, never left her face. "Is there any reason you couldn't say yes?" he asked.

"I am afraid there are many. One of them--rather two of them--are out under the tree at present."

His gaze followed her gesture.

"Are they really a reason? I love the kiddies and they like me. Surely it would be no injustice nor detriment to them. Why should it?"

"Not to them--rather to you--to any man I married. They are a very piece of me. They are me. If there ever came to be a decision between them and--well, call the man you--I should decide for them. Is that fair to you? Would you risk it?"

"Willingly. Why should there be any decision or division? What do you think I am? If I marry you I marry them too. I am crazy over children. I've always wanted them."

"Exactly," said Felicia quietly. "That would be part of the injustice to you. I don't want children. Marianna and Donald are enough."

"So they would be for me. Felicia, can't you understand, I want nothing except what you want--what will make you happy? Is there any other reason?"

"Yes, she is coming up the Hill now."

He turned quickly and saw Sylvia, with her friends on either side, just going up the path which led to the door of the Byrd sisters preparatory to an afternoon call.

"What nonsense!" He turned back to Felicia to protest. "Sylvia would be the last to stand in the way of your happiness."

"Oh, I know that. But listen, Stephen. You accused me of not understanding a moment ago. Now it is you who do not understand. Do you know what Sylvia has been to me all these years? No, you couldn't possibly know. No man could. Six years ago I was weary almost unto death, and discouraged with a weight of hopelessness which was beginning to make even the children seem a burden. That Christmas was the blackest time of all the months since Sydney went. I tell you honestly it didn't seem as if I could go on with it all. I was too near the breaking point. And then straight out of the delightful good fairyland where she lives came Sylvia begging me to be her Christmas sister and bring the babies to round out her magic Christmas circle. I believe it was Sylvia's smile and Sylvia's pleading eyes that began to heal the hurt in me then and there. I have had lonely moments since, of course, and some black ones, too, but they have never been so bad since that Christmas. Do you wonder that next to my own children I care more for Sylvia and her happiness than for anything else in the world?"

Stephen shook his head soberly, trying his best to understand since she desired it.

"After the Christmas family scattered I came to be what Sylvia calls her homekeeper and that I have been for over five years now. You can see a little what it has meant to me to have a home like Arden Hall for the children to grow up in instead of a cramped city apartment with no outdoors except public parks to play in. It has made all the difference in the world to them and to me, body, mind and soul. I couldn't have been half a mother to them the way I was working and living. And all of this we owe to Sylvia."

"But you have rendered good measure. You have given her a home no less than she has given you one. It has been a fair exchange."

"I know. It has meant almost as much to Sylvia as it has to me. It has given us both what we wanted most. I don't pretend it hasn't been give and take. It has. But this one year is the one of all the six since I've known Sylvia that she needs me most. I wouldn't fail her now for anything."

"And they say women have no sex loyalty," muttered Stephen Kinnard. "See here, Felicia, do you realize you have as good as accepted me?"

"Accepted you! I have been refusing you with reasons for fifteen minutes." Felicia's serene voice was a bit ruffled and there was a flush in her cheeks.

"You've been giving reasons, I grant you, but not refusal. Look at me, Felicia. If there weren't any Marianna and Donald and Sylvia in the world wouldn't you say this minute, 'Stephen, I'll marry you just as soon as you can get the license'? No quibble now. Honest."

Felicia laughed softly and her flush deepened.

"If there weren't any Marianna and Donald and Sylvia in the world I should be so desperately lonesome I should tell the first man that asked me I would marry him as soon as he could get the license, but seeing that there are Marianna and Donald and Sylvia, not only in the world but on this very Hill, I am not in the least lonesome and quite satisfied with my mothering-sistering job, thank you."

"Then it is really no?"

The mirth died out of her eyes at the gravity of his tone.

"Yes, Stephen. I am sorry, but it is really no. Aside from Sylvia and the children there would always be Sydney. You are too fine to be a second best, Stephen, dear. Do go and find somebody who is fresher and younger and less--tired than I am."

At her words there rose to both their minds a vision of Hope Williams' dainty, wild rose beauty and wistful "dryad" eyes. Stephen had been sketching her only that morning in the Oriole Inn garden and every line of her exquisite, fragile, flower-like face and lithe, graceful young body was in his head still. And Felicia had more than once surprised an unforgettable expression in Hope's eyes when the artist had come suddenly into the girl's presence. Hope was young, younger than Sylvia, and Stephen Kinnard was forty. But he was of the eternally young type of man, brimming over with that inexplicable, irresistible thing we call charm, and his years abroad had stamped him with a picturesque, foreign quality which was sure to appeal to the romantic fancy of youth. One ardent gaze from those strange, gold-flecked eyes of his had no doubt been enough to set many a maid dreaming ere this, and he had been kind to Hope, perhaps more than kind for all Felicia knew.

But already the vision of Hope had vanished from Stephen's mind. He saw only the mature grace and loveliness of the woman who had long ago been the one fixed star of his errant youth and to whom he now brought the homage of ripened manhood.

"I don't want anybody in the smallest particular different from yourself, sweet Lady Love. Don't worry though," as he saw her troubled eyes. "I am not going to pester you. I shall take myself off to-morrow but I shall come back and some day I shall surprise you in a lonely hour and you will say, 'Stephen, do hurry and get the license.'"

Seeing his whimsical, reassuring smile, Felicia smiled back, half relieved, and indeed not quite knowing how much of it all had been in earnest; glad, at all events, to have him slip back so easily into the familiar channels of friendliness.