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By Root 200 0

from within the Kursaal, the shrill cries of late bathers from the shore, the toot of a tramway-horn to the left, the roar of a siren to the right, and everywhere the ceaseless hum of an existence at once gay, feverish, and futile; but Cecil was conscious of nothing but the individuality by his side. Some women, he reflected, are older at eighteen than they are at thirty-eight, and Geraldine was one of those. She happened to be very young and very old at the same time. She might be immature, crude, even gawky in her girlish-ness; but she was just then in the first flush of mentally realising the absolute independence of the human spirit. She had force, and she had also the enterprise to act on it.

As Cecil glanced at her intelligent, expressive face, he thought of her playing with life as a child plays with a razor.

“You mean——?” he inquired.

“I mean that father has been talking about me to you. I could tell by his eyes. Well?”

“Your directness unnerves me,” he smiled.

“Pull yourself together, then, Mr. Thorold. Be a man.”

“Will you let me treat you as a friend?”

“Why, yes,” she said, “if you’ll promise not to tell me I’m only eighteen.”

“I am incapable of such rudeness,” Cecil replied. “A woman is as old as she feels. You feel at least thirty; therefore you are at least thirty. This being understood, I am going to suggest, as a friend, that if you and Mr. Vaux-Lowry are—perhaps pardonably—contemplating any extreme step——”

“Extreme step, Mr. Thorold?”

“Anything rash.”

“And suppose we are?” Geraldine demanded, raising her chin scornfully and defiantly and dangling her parasol.

“I should respectfully and confidentially advise you to refrain. Be content to wait, my dear middle-aged woman. Your father may relent. And also, I have a notion that I may be able to—to——”

“Help us?”

“Possibly.”

“You are real good,” said Geraldine coldly. “But what gave you the idea that Harry and I were meaning to——?”

“Something in your eyes—your fine, daring eyes. I read you as you read your father, you see?”

“Well, then, Mr. Thorold, there’s something wrong with my fine, daring eyes. I’m just the last girl in all America to do anything—rash. Why! if I did anything rash, I’m sure I should feel ever afterwards as if I wanted to be excused off the very face of the earth. I’m that sort of girl. Do you think I don’t know that father will give way? I guess he’s just got to. With time and hammering, you can knock sense into the head of any parent.”

“I apologise,” said Cecil, both startled and convinced. “And I congratulate Mr. Vaux-Lowry.”

“Say. You like Harry, don’t you?”

“Very much. He’s the ideal type of Englishman.”

Geraldine nodded sweetly. “And so obedient! He does everything I tell him. He is leaving for England to-night, not because father asked him to, but because I did. I’m going to take mother to Brussels for a few days’ shopping—lace, you know. That will give father an opportunity to meditate in solitude on his own greatness. Tell me, Mr. Thorold, do you consider that Harry and I would be justified in corresponding secretly?”

Cecil assumed a pose of judicial gravity.

“I think you would,” he decided. “But don’t tell anyone I said so.”

“Not even Harry?”

She ran off into the Kursaal, saying she must seek her mother. But instead of seeking her mother, Geraldine passed straight through the concert-hall, where a thousand and one wondrously attired women were doing fancy needlework to the accompaniment of a band of music, into the maze of corridors beyond, and so to the rear entrance of the Kursaal on the Boulevard van Isoghem. Here she met Mr. Harry Vaux-Lowry, who was most obviously waiting for her. They crossed the road to the empty tramway waiting-room and entered it and sat down; and by the mere act of looking into each other’s eyes, these two—the stiff, simple, honest-faced young Englishman with “Oxford” written all over him, and the charming child of a civilisation equally proud, but with fewer conventions, suddenly transformed the little bureau into a Cupid’s bower.

“It’s just as I thought, you darling boy,” Geraldine