fairly rippled with delight at her recollection of the vanquishing of the
intrepid David.

"The standards for a wife were a bit strenuous in those days," he
answered, smiling down on her. "I'm afraid Dave will have trouble finding
one on those terms. And yet--" he paused and there was a touch of mockery
in his tone.

"I think that a woman could be very, very happy fulfilling every one of
those conditions if she were woman enough," answered Caroline Darrah
Brown, looking straight into his eyes with her beautiful, disconcerting,
dangerous young seriousness.

Andrew picked up his manuscript with the mental attitude of catching at a
straw.

"Oh," she said quickly, "you were going to read to the major, weren't
you?" And the entreaty in her eyes was as young as her seriousness; as
young as that of a very little girl begging for a wonder tale. The heart
of a man may be of stone but even flint flies a spark.

Andrew Sevier flushed under his pallor and ruffled his pages back to a
serenade he had written, with which the star for whom the play was being
made expected to exploit a deep-timbred voice in a recitative
vocalization. And while he read it to her slowly, Fate finessed on the
third round.

And so the major found them an hour or more later, he standing in the
failing light turning the pages and she looking up at him, listening,
with her cheek upon her interlaced fingers and her elbows resting on the