would ever come to him!  The glamour was about Gila to-night and no mistake!  He looked at her with his heart in his eyes, and she drooped her lashes to hide a glint of triumph, knowing she had chosen her setting aright at last.  Softly, dreamily, pleasantly, in the back of her mind floated the Capitol of the nation, and herself standing amid admiring throngs receiving homage.  She was going to succeed.  She had achieved her first triumph with the look in Courtland’s eyes.  She would be able to carry out Mr. Ramsey Thomas’s commission and win Courtland to anything that would forward ambitious hopes for him!  She was sure of it!

The very important business about which she had wished to see Courtland was to ask him if he would be her partner in a bazaar and pageant that was shortly to be given for some charitable purpose by the society folks with whom she companioned.  She wanted Courtland to march with her, and to consult him about the characters they should choose and the costumes they should wear.

As if she had been a child desiring him to play with her, he yielded to her mood, watching her all the time with delighted eyes, that anything so exquisite and lovely should stoop to sue for his favor.  Of course he would be her partner!  He entered into the arrangements with a zest, though he let her do all the planning, and heeded little what character she had chosen for him, or what costume, so she was pleased.  Indeed, his part in the matter seemed of little moment so he might go with her—­his sweet, shy, lovely maiden!  For so she seemed to him that night!  A perfect Solveig!

The reason for the little slippers became apparent later, when she insisted upon teaching him the dancing-steps that were to be used in a final splendid assembly after the pageant.  There was intoxication in the delight of moving with her through the dreamy steps to the music of the expensive Victrola she set going.  Just to watch her little feet like fairies for lightness and grace; to touch her small, warm hand; to be so near those down-drooping lashes; to feel her breath on his hand; to think of her as trusting her lovely little self to him—­made him almost deliriously happy.  And she, with her drooping lashes, her delicate way of barely touching his arm, her utter seeming unconsciousness of his presence, was so exquisite and pure and lovely to-night!  She did not dream, of course, of how she made his pulses thrill and how he was longing to gather her into his arms and tell her how lovely she was.  Afterward he was never quite sure what kept him from doing it.  He thought at the time it was herself, a sort of wall of purity and loveliness that surrounded her and made her sacred, so that he felt he must go slowly, must not startle her nor make her afraid of him.  It never occurred to him that the wall might be surrounding himself.  He had entirely forgotten that first visit to Gila in the Mephistophelian garments, with the red light filling all the unholy atmosphere.  There had never been so much as a hint of a red light in the room since he said he did not like it.  The lamp-shade seemed to have disappeared.  In its place was a great wrought-metal thing of old silver jeweled with opalescent medallions.