The open-armed hospitality with which their very delightful little world had welcomed her had been positively entrancing to the girl and she had entered into its gaieties with the joyous zest of the child that she was.  Her own social experiences had been up to this time very limited, for she had come straight from the convent in France into the household of her semi-invalided father.  He had had very few friends and in a vaguely uncomfortable way she had been made to realize that her millions made her position inaccessible; but by these delightful people to whom social position was a birthright, and wealth regarded only as a purchasing power for the necessities and gaieties of life, she had been adopted with much enthusiasm.  Her delight in the round of entertainments in her honor and the innocent and slightly bewildered adventures she brought the major for consultation kept him in a constant state of interested amusement.  Such advice as he offered went far in preserving her unsophistication.

And so the late November days found him enjoying life with a decidedly added zest in things, though his Immortals claimed him the moment he was left to his own resources and at times he even became entirely oblivious to the eddies in the lives around him.  One cold afternoon he sat in his chair, buried eyes-deep in one of his old books, while across from him sat Phoebe and Andrew Sevier, bending together over a large map spread out before them.  There were stacks of blueprints at their elbows and their conference had evidently been an interesting one.

“It’s all wonderful, Andrew,” Phoebe was saying, “and I’m proud indeed that they have accepted your solution of such an important construction problem; but why must you go back?  Aren’t the commissions offered you here, the plays and the demand for your writing enough?  Why not stay at home for a year or two at least?”

“It’s the call of it, Phoebe,” he answered.  “I get restless and there’s nothing for it but the hard work of the camp.  It’s lonely but it has its compensations, for the visions come down there as they don’t here.  You know how I like to be with all of you; and it’s home—­but the depression gets more than I can stand at times and I must go.  You understand better than the rest, I think, and I always count on you to help me off.”  As he spoke he rested his head on his hands and looked across the table into the fire.  His eyes were somber and the strong lines in his face cut deep with a grim melancholy.

Phoebe’s frank eyes softened as they looked at him.  They had grown up together, friends in something of a like fortune and she understood him with a frank comradeship that comforted them both and went far to the distraction of young David Kildare who, as he said, trusted Andrew but looked for every possible surprising maneuver in the conduct of Phoebe.  And because she understood Andrew Phoebe was silent for a time, tracing the lines on his map with a pencil.