regions with his honest eyes and booming voice discreetly muffled to
accord with the moonlight and the quiet places around the deck. I may
never get that sort of a joy-drink again, but it was so well done that
it will help me to administer the same to others when the awful occasion
arrives.

"A woman is the spark that lights the flame on the altar of the inner
man, dear, and you'll have to sparkle when your time comes," he warned
me, as I hurried what might have been a very tender parting, the last
night at sea.

"_Spark_"--she's a conflagration by this new plan of Jane's, but I'm
glad he didn't know about it then. He may have to suffer from it yet. It
is best for him to be as happy as he can as long as he can.

"Evelina, dear," said Jane, as she and Mary Elizabeth Conners and I sat
in the suite of apartments in which our proud Alma Mater had lodged us
old grads, returned for our second degrees, "your success has been
remarkable, and I am not surprised at all that that positively creative
thesis of yours on the Twentieth Century Garden, to which I listened
to-night, procured you an honorable mention in your class at the Beaux
Arts. The French are a nation that quickly recognizes genius. I am very
happy to-night. All your honors and achievements make me only the more
certain that I have chosen the right person for the glorious mission I
am about to offer you."

"Oh, no, Jane!" I exclaimed, from a sort of instinct for trouble to
come. I know that devoted, twenty-second century look in Jane's intense,
near-sighted eyes, and I always fend from it. She is a very dear person,
and I respectfully adore her. Indeed, I sometimes think she is the real