They made a delightful evening of it, living in the land of Never Was. For
one source of her charm lay in the gay, childlike whimsicality o her
imagination. She believed in fairies and heroes with all her heart, which
with her was an organ not located in her brain. The delicious gurgle of
gaiety in her laugh was a new find to him in feminine attractions.

There had been many who thought the career of this pirate of industry
beggared fiction, though, few had found his flinty personality a radiaton
of romance. But this convent-nurtured child had made a discovery in men,
one out of the rut of the tailor-made, convention-bound society youths to
whom her experience for the most part had been limited. She delighted in
his masterful strength, in the confidence of his careless dominance. She
liked to see that look of power in his gray-blue eyes softened to the
droll, half-tender, expression with which he played the game of
make-believe. There were no to-morrows; to-day marked the limit of time
for them. By tacit consent they lived only in the present, shutting out
deliberately from their knowledge of each other, that past which was not
common to both. Even their names were unknown to each other, and both of
them were glad that it was so.

The long winter evening had fallen early, and they dined by candle-light,
considering merrily how much they might with safety eat and yet leave
enough for the to-morrows that lay before them. Afterward they sat before
the fire, in the shadow and shine of the flickering logs, happy and
content in each other's presence. She dreamed, and he, watching her,
dreamed, too. The wild, sweet wonder of life surged through them, touching
their squalid surroundings to the high mystery of things unreal.

The strangeness of it was that he was a man of large and not very
creditable experience of women, yet her deep, limpid eyes, her sweet