Part 1

On the occasion when his cousin was graduated with the highest
honors from the law school of Verden University Jeff sat
inconspicuously near the rear of the chapel. James, as class
orator, rose to his hour. From the moment that he moved slowly to
the front of the platform, handsome and impassive, his calm gaze
sweeping over the audience while he waited for the little bustle
of expectancy to subside, Jeff knew that the name of Farnum was
going to be covered with glory.

The orator began in a low clear voice that reached to the last
seat in the gallery. Jeff knew that before he finished its echoes
would be ringing through the hall like a trumpet call to the
emotions of those present.

It was not destined that Jeff should hear a word of that stirring
peroration. His eye fell by chance upon a young woman seated in a
box beside an elderly man whom he recognized as Peter C. Frome.
From that instant he was lost to all sense perception that did not
focus upon her. For he was looking at the dryad who had come upon
him out of the ferns three years before. She would never know it,
but Alice Frome had saved him from the weakness that might have
destroyed him.
From that day he had been a total abstainer. Now as he looked at
her the vivid irregular beauty of the girl flowed through him like
music. Her charm for him lay deeper than the golden gleams of
imprisoned sunlight woven in her hair, than the gallant poise of
the little head above the slender figure. Though these set his
heart beating wildly, a sure instinct told him of the fine and