white glory of cosmos and the dial beyond, dedicating itself discreetly to none but sunny hours; beyond still farther to the clear turquoise space of sky visible behind it all.

"Being happy isn't much of an art when you can't help being it," she said, her gaze and her thoughts coming back from their momentary journey.

"Oh, but he didn't mean just your being happy," put in Barb in her quick, serious way. "He meant your way of making other people happy. It's true. I noticed it often in college. But it is truer than ever here. Everybody in Arden Hall is happy. It is like Shakespeare's forest. It makes you feel different--not just only happy but better, being here."

"That is the house. It has been like that ever since I had my Christmas family here. Of course, it is realty mostly Felicia. She is the mainspring of it all. But we like to pretend there is something magic about the house itself. You don't know how I love every stick and brick of it. I have never had half enough of it. I have been in school so much, I've only snatched a few vacations on the wing, as it were, and even that only in the last few years since I captured Felicia. Ugh! Nobody knows how I hated those dreadful holidays in hotels after Aunt Nell died and I came to America. And nobody knows how I love this." Her expansive gesture made "this" include house and lawn and magnolia and pink and white bloom and sun dial and all the rest, perhaps even the turquoise stretch of sky. "I've never had my fill of homeness," she concluded.

"Funny!" mused Suzanne. "Now, I don't want to be at home at all. Norton is such a stuffy, snippy, gossipy, little town, and I loathe being officially the 'parson's daughter.' Sometimes it used to seem to me I'd rather throw myself in the river than go to another prayer meeting and hear Deacon Derby drone out minute instructions to the Lord as to how he should manage his business. And being home isn't so sweet and simple as it seems either. I adore my mother, but we don't see two things alike in the wide world. She likes the chairs stiff and straight against the walls, just in the same position year in, year out. I like 'em at casual experimental angles, different every day. That is typical of our two viewpoints. She likes things eternally straight and the same. I like 'em eternally on the bias and different. We can't either of us help it. We are made that way. And we're both more or less miserable, whether we give in or whether we don't. Mother and Dad are regular darlings, both of them, but I don't mean to stay at home with them a bit more than I can help. They don't need me. They are perfectly used to doing without me and are really much happier sans Suzanne. I just stir things up and they like to snuggle down in their nice comfortable ruts. I've got to live in New York. I'd smother in Norton, Pa."

"Roger doesn't seem to be smothering in Norton," Sylvia reminded her. "Jack stopped over to see him last week and he said Roger was stirring things up with a vengeance since he has been sitting among the city fathers."

"Oh, Roger!" Suzanne shrugged Roger away as entirely negligible. "Roger Minot would stir things up in a graveyard. He likes to live in a small town. I don't. The biggest city in the world isn't one bit too big for me. New York for mine. Better change your mind, Sylvia, and come on, too. There will be plenty of room in my garret. More room than anything else probably. Aunt Sarah's legacy has its limits, more's the pity. But come on and share my crust."

"Maybe I will, temporarily. I've promised Jeanette Latham to visit her next winter and I'll include you and Barb in my rounds if invited."

"Jeanette Latham? Mrs. Francis VanDycke Latham? The Mrs. Latham who figures in 'Vanity Fair' and the Sunday supplement? The only Jack's sister? There will be some contrast between visiting her and visiting me. She inhabits a Duplex on the Drive, doesn't she? One of the utterly utter."

"That depends. Mr. Latham is awfully rich and old family, if that is what you mean, and Jeanette does like to be at the extreme of everything, but underneath all her dazzle and glitter she is really as simple and genuine as Jack is. I like her, and she is Jack's favorite sister."

"Which helps," murmured Suzanne. "See here, Sylvia, if you once get into that high society labyrinth you'll never get out."

"Oh, yes I shall--unless the Minotaur gets me. I just want a bit of Jeanette's kind of life to see what it is really like. In fact, I want to try all kinds."

Sylvia smiled as she spoke, but she meant her last assertion for all that. Hers was an eager, active, questing temperament. She was avid for life in its entirety, with a healthy zest for experience whose sword blades rather than poppy seeds appealed to her just now, as is natural with youth. The college world from which she had been recently emancipated, full and various and strenuous as it had often been, had never fully satisfied her free, quick, young spirit. She had always the memory of those early rich years in Paris with her aunt from which to draw comparison. She had once complained to Felicia that college was too much like the Lady of Shallott's tower whose occupants perceived life in a polished mirror instead of in direct contact. She was already frankly a little tired of "shadows," ready for the real thing, whatever that was.

"Maybe I am glad I don't have to do any one thing," she continued. "All through school you are so pushed and guarded and guided and instructed you don't have half a chance to be yourself. I'm thankful for a breathing space to find out who I really am."

"Why, Sylvia! How funny!" puzzled Barb. "Don't you know all about yourself?"

"No, do you?"

Barbara shook her head with a faint sigh.

"Maybe not. Or, if I do, I don't let myself look at the real Barb for fear--" She broke off and Suzanne intervened.

"Well, I know all there is to know about Suzanne Morrison. I have taken considerable pains to get acquainted, in fact. It is great to know precisely what you want and that you are going to get it sooner or later." Thus the sublime arrogance of the young twenties.

"I wish I did!" said Sylvia quickly.

"Which?"

"Both," parried Sylvia.

But Barb, who was watching her, was aware of something in her friend's face which she could not quite fathom. Was it possible there was anything in the world Sylvia Arden wanted and could not have? It was a startling thought to Barb, who was accustomed to considering Sylvia as the Princess of all the Heart's Desires.

Just then the Japanese gong from within sent out its silver-tongued invitation. With the alacrity of the healthily hungry and heart-free the three friends rose, the conclave ended, consigning to temporary oblivion Causes, Careers and all Concomitant Problems.

CHAPTER II

REASONS AND WRAITHS

Mrs. Emory laid down her sewing on the porch table and rose to greet Stephen Kinnard, a tall, lean man with a rather angular but interesting face, with hair slightly graying on the temples, and remarkably beautiful eyes,