went on. 'She and her maid have got rooms over at the Beguins. And, do you know, a most singular coincidence,' he added with some excitement, 'she tells me that ever since childhood she's had an idea like this-- like the story, I mean--an idea of her own she always wanted to write but couldn't-----'

'Of course, of course,' interrupted Rogers impatiently; and then he added quickly, 'but how _very_ extraordinary!'

'The idea that Thought makes a network everywhere about the world in which we all are caught, and that it's a positive duty, therefore, to think beauty--as much a duty as washing one's face and hands, because what you think _touches_ others all day long, and all night long too-- in sleep.'

'Only she couldn't write it?' asked Rogers. His tongue was like a thick wedge of unmanageable wood in his mouth. He felt like a man who hears another spoil an old, old beautiful story that he knows himself with intimate accuracy.

'She can telegraph, she says, but she can't write!'

'An expensive talent,' thought the practical Minks.

'Oh, she's very rich, apparently. But isn't it odd? You see, she thought it vividly, played it, lived it. Why, she tells me she even had a Cave in her mountains where lost thoughts and lost starlight collected, and that she made a kind of Pattern with them to represent the Net. She showed me a drawing of it, for though she can't write, she paints quite well. But the odd thing is that she claims to have thought out the main idea of my own story years and years ago with the feeling that some day her idea was bound to reach some one who _would_ write it---'

'Almost a case of transference,' put in Minks.

'A fairy tale, yes, isn't it!'

'Married?' asked Rogers, with a gulp, as they reached the door. But apparently he had not said it out loud, for there was no reply.

He tried again less abruptly. It required almost a physical effort to drive his tongue and frame the tremendous question.

'What a fairy story for her children! How _they_ must love it!' This time he spoke so loud that Minks started and looked up at him.

'Ah, but she has no children,' his cousin said.

They went upstairs, and the introductions to Monsieur and Madame Michaud began, with talk about rooms and luggage. The mist was over him once more. He heard Minks saying:--

'Oui, je comprongs un poo,' and the clatter of heavy boots up and down the stairs, ... and then found himself washing his hands in stinging hot water in his cousin's room.

'The children simply adore her already,' he heard, 'and she won Mother's confidence at the very start. They can't manage her long name. They just call her the Little Countess--die kleine Grafin. She's doing a most astonishing work in Austria, it seems, with children... the Montessori method, and all that....'

'By George, now; is it possible? Bourcelles accepted her at once then?'

'She accepted Bourcelles rather--took it bodily into herself--our poverty, our magic boxes, our democratic intimacy, and all the rest; it was just as though she had lived here with us always. And she kept asking who Orion was--that's you, of course--and why you weren't here---'

'And the Den too?' asked Rogers, with a sudden trembling in his heart, yet knowing well the answer.

'Simply appropriated it--came in naturally without being asked; Jimbo opened the door and Monkey pushed her in. She said it was her Star Cave. Oh, she's a remarkable being, you know, rather,' he went on more gravely, 'with unusual powers of sympathy. She seems to feel at once what you are feeling. Takes everything for granted as though she knew. I think she _does_ know, if you ask me---'

'Lives the story in fact,' the other interrupted, hiding his face rather in the towel, 'lives her belief instead of dreaming it, eh?'

'And, fancy this!' His voice had a glow and softness in it as he said it, coming closer, and almost whispering, 'she wants to take Jinny and Monkey for a bit and educate them.' He stood away to watch the effect of the announcement. 'She even talks of sending Edward to Oxford, too!' He cut a kind of wumbled caper in his pleasure and excitement.

'She loves children then, evidently?' asked the other, with a coolness that was calculated to hide other feelings. He rubbed his face in the rough towel as though the skin must come off. Then, suddenly dropping the towel, he looked into his cousin's eyes a moment to ensure a proper answer.

'Longs for children of her own, I think,' replied the author; 'one sees it, feels it in all she says and does. Rather sad, you know, that! An unmarried mother---'

'In fact,' put in Rogers lightly, 'the very character you needed to play the principal role in your story. When you write the longer version in book form you'll have to put her in.'

'And find her a husband too--which is a bore. I never write love stories, you see. She's finer as she is at present--mothering the world.'

Rogers's face, as he brushed his hair carefully before the twisted mirror, was not visible.

There came a timid knock at the door.

'I'm ready, gentlemen, when you are,' answered the voice of Minks outside.

They went downstairs together, and walked quickly over to the Pension for supper. Rogers moved sedately enough so far as the others saw, yet inwardly he pranced like a fiery colt in harness. There were golden reins about his neck. Two tiny hands directed him from the Pleiades. In this leash of sidereal fire he felt as though he flew. Swift thought, flashing like a fairy whip, cut through the air from an immense distance, and urged him forwards. Some one expected him and he was late--years and years late. Goodness, how his companions crawled and dawdled!

'... she doesn't come over for her meals,' he heard, 'but she'll join us afterwards at the Den. You'll come too, won't you, Mr. Minks?'

'Thank you, I shall be most happy--if I'm not intruding,' was the reply as they passed the fountain near the courtyard of the Citadelle. The musical gurgle of its splashing water sounded to Rogers like a voice that sang over and over again, 'Come up, come up, come up! You must come up to me!'

'How brilliant your stars are out here, Mr. Campden,' Minks was saying when they reached the door of La Poste. He stood aside to let the others pass before him. He held the door open politely. 'No wonder you chose them as the symbol for thought and sympathy in your story.' And they climbed the narrow, creaking stairs and entered the little hall where the entire population of the Pension des Glycines awaited them with impatience.

The meal dragged out interminably. Everybody had so much to say. Minks, placed between Mother and Miss Waghorn, talked volubly to the latter and listened sweetly to all her stories. The excitement of the Big Story, however, was in the air, and when she mentioned that she looked forward to reading it, he had no idea, of course, that she had already done so at least three times. The Review had replaced her customary Novel. She went about with it beneath her arm. Minks, feeling friendly and confidential, informed her that he, too, sometimes wrote, and when she noted the fact with a deferential phrase about 'you men of letters,' he rose abruptly to the seventh heaven of contentment. Mother meanwhile, on the other side, took him bodily into her great wumbled heart. 'Poor little chap,' her attitude said plainly, 'I don't believe his wife half looks after him.' Before the end of supper she knew all about Frank and Ronald, the laburnum tree in the front garden, what tea they bought, and Albinia's plan for making coal last longer by mixing it with coke.

Tante Jeanne talked furiously and incessantly, her sister-in-law told her latest dream, and the Postmaster occasionally cracked a solemn joke, laughing uproariously long before the point appeared. It was a merry, noisy meal, and Henry Rogers sat through it upon a throne that was slung with golden ropes from the stars. He was in Fairyland again. Outside, the Pleiades were rising in the sky, and somewhere in Bourcelles--in the rooms above Beguin's shop, to be exact--some one was waiting, ready to come over to the Den. His thoughts flew wildly. Passionate longing drove behind them. 'You must come up to me,' he heard. They all were Kings and Queens.

He played his part, however; no one seemed to notice his preoccupation. The voices sounded now far, now near, as though some wind made sport with them; the faces round him vanished and reappeared; but he contrived cleverly, so that none remarked upon his absent-mindedness. Constellations do not stare at one another much.

'Does your Mother know you're "out"?' asked Monkey once beside him--it was the great joke now, since the Story had been read--and as soon as she was temporarily disposed of, Jimbo had serious information to impart from the other side. 'She's a real Countess,' he said, speaking as man to man. 'I suppose if she went to London she'd know the King-- visit him, like that?'

Bless his little heart! Jimbo always knew the important things to talk about.

There were bursts of laughter sometimes, due usually to statements made abruptly by Jane Anne--as when Mother, discussing the garden with Minks, reviled the mischievous birds:--

'They want thinning badly,' she said.

'Why don't they take more exercise, then?' inquired Jinny gravely.

And in these gusts of laughter Rogers joined heartily, as though he knew exactly what the fun was all about. In this way he deceived everybody and protected himself from discovery. And yet it seemed to