compensate for a want of purpose in life, as he had, indeed, felt long ago. That a woman, however, should give expression to the sentiment surprised him. Her next words astonished him still more.

"I have always been ambitious, and I might have achieved something in art if I hadn't wasted so many years trying other things."

"But, surely you must find the knowledge you have acquired worth having."

"I would willingly exchange it all for two years' progress in my work. The mistakes began by poppa discovering I was a musical genius, and as I was just mad to do something big in the world, I believed him. The next discovery was mine—that I was a great writer, and when, two years after that, an artist friend declared some sketches of mine were full of inspiration, my enthusiasm for writing fizzed out immediately, and I rushed into painting, and over to Paris to study. Of course, I'm only in the student stage, but my professor has given me distinct encouragement. In my heart I really believe I should succeed if only——" She broke off with a curious laugh, but went on almost immediately: "If only I don't transfer my enthusiasm to sculpture before long. You see I know my little ways. Besides, the temptation to change is as strong as it possibly can be. It would be such a distinction to have completed the round of the arts."

"Poetry would still be left untouched."

"Oh, I've written poetry as well. That was part and parcel of my literary mania."

"And naturally expired with it."

"No. Let me confess. Poetry is the one thing I keep up in order to be able to feel I am made of fine stuff. It's the one unsaleable thing I devote my time to, and without it I should feel utterly ignoble. With all my ambition to achieve greatness, I am quite unable to say how much of my enthusiasm is due to the hope of accompanying dollars."

Paul was startled for a moment, then laughed in high amusement at the idea of a railway king's daughter eking out her income by Art.

"I mean it. I'm not as noble as I look, but thank you for the compliment all the same. If I have allowed myself any illusions on the point, they were all dissipated when I heard of the price a Salon picture sold for last year. My feeling of envy was too naked to be mistaken—naked and unashamed. I don't know if you've ever experienced the sort of thing—whether you've ever written poetry to keep your self-respect."

"I fear writing poetry would be no test for me. I don't mean to imply that the result would not be unsaleable," he added, smiling, "but that I am not so avaricious as you profess to be. I am quite satisfied that my work in life shall bring me no return."

"I wish I were as fine as that," said Miss Brooke.

"I am afraid I am far from being fine," said Paul, modestly. "I am simply content with my fortune. As you said before, one must do something to fill one's life. I am only too grateful for the prospect of being able to employ my energies. So you see I am really selfish at bottom."

"We each appear to have a due sense of the clay in us, so let us agree we are neither of us precisely the saints we appear. But you've not yet told me in what particular way you purpose satisfying that selfishness of yours."

"Thereby hangs a long tale," said Paul, laughing again. "It is connected with the family tradition I mentioned to you before."

"I remember. Your father laid some injunction on you about converting missionary energies and subscriptions for home use."

"That is a quaint way of putting it. It is true his injunction first set me thinking, and it led to my developing certain Utopian ideas of my own. As the result, I am now studying architecture. No doubt you will think it a strange choice. There begins another dance, and we've both partners."

"How vexatious!" said Miss Brooke. "Just when I am so interested. I am really longing to hear all about your Utopia."

"I should so much have liked to tell you," murmured Paul, thinking he might even have sat out another dance if it were not for his foolish exclamation.

"Oh, but you're going to call, Mr. Middleton."

"I shall be very happy," said Paul, repressing a start.

She wrote her address for him on the back of his programme, adding, "I shall be in on Wednesday afternoon."

He thanked her and took her down to the dancing-room where she was pounced upon immediately, and he then discovered, to his surprise, that he and Miss Brooke had sat out two dances! Moreover, the frown which Celia gave him over her partner's shoulder as she waltzed by made him refer to his programme, when he found he had overlooked the little tick at the side of dance number fourteen.

CHAPTER II.

"A day and a half to wait before seeing Miss Brooke again," was Paul's first reflection the next morning. "All I should have laughed at as absurd a month ago, proves to be true. I am fast in the toils." And all through the day Miss Brooke filled his thoughts. He was, somehow, a different person from before, as if he had awakened from some sluggish torpor.

All his life Paul had suffered from an excess of parental love, which had considerably curtailed his freedom; and even when the death of his father a year before had left him his own master, he had no thought of living away from his mother, much to her secret gratification. Her fondness for him had been such that she had had him educated at home for several years, and was only persuaded to let him go to school under great pressure from her husband. She had established her influence over her boy from the beginning, and his pliable and obedient disposition had enabled her to maintain it now that he was grown up. His father, who had divided his time between collecting beautiful beetles, representing a rural constituency, enacting the good Samaritan, and, as Paul had told Miss Brooke, thundering and writing letters to the press against foreign missions, had cherished an ambitious career for his son. He himself, he felt, was a mere pawn on the parliamentary chessboard, and he dreamt of a really great political future for Paul, who, moreover, he hoped, would leave his mark on the social life of the generation by promoting the increase of public fine-art collections. Beautiful centres of art—beautiful buildings with beautiful contents—could be established, he argued, if the money subscribed for foreign missions could be used for the purpose; and he had the necessary statistics ready to hurl at the head of the sceptic.

Acting on the advice of a friend who considered the Bar afforded the best training in oratory, he began by placing the boy in a solicitor's office immediately after he had left college. Some eighteen months later the father was carried off in an epidemic of influenza. Paul, who had long since discovered that oratory viâ the law was not adapted to one of his temperament, had decision enough to desist from it. His attitude towards his sire's dream had never been a very reverent one, for he knew well he was not of the stuff of which Parliamentary leaders are made. But, as the affection between the two had been really strong, the son wished to respect the father's ideas so far as possible, if only for sentimental reasons; and, finding in himself a natural taste for making beautiful designs as well as an innocent love for illuminated books, old carvings and mouldings, and such curious antiques as had