The lady was standing perfectly still. He decided that she had admirable repose. Her wide eyes looked straight into his. The intensity of her low voice was a bit thrilling.

"If evaire I did want a play," she answered coolly, "I would know exactly where I would 'pick it up,' as you call it. I would not 'pick it up' the way you 'pick up' plays, M'sieur Graemer. I have a friend whose play you 'picked up'—" she gestured toward the house. Her deliberate reiteration of his chance phrase was irritating to say the least. He turned uncomfortably to look at the stairway toward which she was motioning. And he did have the grace to look rather disconcerted when he saw Miss Blythe Modder approaching. He glanced quickly back to the woman he had come to see.

Felicia stepped close to him.

"I did not want you to come to my house," she began passionately. "I just wanted you to see the lawyer who attends to certain legal matters for me." The little breathless rush of her words fascinated him, the alluring way she slurred her syllables together, the quick staccato with which she paused on short words! At first he hardly grasped what she was saying, so intent was he upon her extraordinary manner of speaking. It made him feel somehow like a child. It irritated and soothed him at the same time. "I did not want you to come here at all." She stamped her foot for emphasis. "It is insulting for you to be in Maman's garden! But now that you're here and Blythe is here and I am here, why, I think we must talk things ovaire. With this lawyer who lives here with us. It is Blythe's play 'The Magician' that we will talk about. It was in your offices for almost a year and you had it there at least two years before you wrote 'The Juggler,' didn't you? Tell me!"

"The two plays are utterly dissimilar—"

"The two plays are utterly similar." Felicia's cool voice corrected him. She had an exasperating directness of manner! "Whenever you are counting how vairee much money you did have from 'The Juggler' do you not sometimes think that the girl who wrote the play ought to have some of those moneys?"

"The two plays were totally dissimilar—" he repeated hotly.

"Felice! Felice!" groaned the Poetry Girl. "You're just wasting your breath! It's no use talking to him! Why, I almost got down on my knees to him! I wept—"

"I shall not weep," said Felicia calmly. "I shall just tell him how vairee simple it would be for him to explain. He can just tell people that it is her play and that some of it is her moneys and then he can give you the money. Oh, you couldn't have understood how bad, bad, bad you made things for her! Even this spring, while you were still getting money from her play, she was poor and sick and almost starving—just like the girl in her 'Magician'—"

She paused eloquently but she never let her eyes leave his. He fidgeted with his hat. He tried to avoid that clear gaze, but whatever the faint stirrings of his conscience might have prompted him to say the blundering but well meaning lawyer prevented. That indiscreet person stepped briskly forward.

"I am one of Miss Modder's legal advisors," he began importantly. "You probably know that we are anticipating bringing another and much stronger action against you. But if you should happen to feel that you wanted to enter into some sort of negotiations for an adjustment of—"

Graemer caught his breath.

"I'll be damned if I do—" he ejaculated. He was white with chagrin to think that his stupidity had trapped him into such an annoying situation. He was moving blindly toward the stairway; all he wanted was a quick termination of the whole irritating interview.

Felicia stopped him. She put her hand on his arm.

"Let me explain for you a little," she pleaded, "I am sorry that these lawyer men do not understand. I know exactly how you happened to do it. You didn't mean to take it at first, did you? I know because I once took something that was not mine. It was food," she smiled a little at the memory. "It did not seem like stealing because it was just a little food. It just seemed like something I wanted and that I must have and so I took it. Maybe that was the way it was with you about 'The Magician.' It was something that you wanted and must have! Perhaps it didn't seem like stealing because it was only something that was written on a paper. It wasn't even like something you could hold in your hand. It was just something somebody wrote down on some pieces of paper. Maybe you didn't understand that it was all of her hopes and dreams—"

"Gad! What a Sunday School you do keep!" he sneered. He tried to pass her. He had jammed his hat back upon his head. Perhaps he would have actually gotten away from her only that that was the moment that Dulcie Dierckt opened the long French doors at the head of the little outside stairway and motioned down the steps to the excited man who was following her.

"There's Mr. Graemer," she said; "here's some one to see you," she called wickedly, as she leaned across the balcony.

It was all over so quickly that afterward neither the Poetry Girl nor the lawyer could tell how it happened. Dulcie could tell a little more because she watched it from above.

Dudley Hamilt went down that narrow stairway in a sort of running leap. He faced the agitated Mr. Graemer squarely but he gave him something less than half a minute in which to defend himself. And then he proceeded with a most satisfying thoroughness to pummel and pound and thump. Their struggling figures shoved to and fro in the pebbled paths. Janet and Molly O'Reilly ran screaming from their kitchen. The Poetry Girl scrambled out of their way by jumping to an iron bench. She dragged Felicia up after her.

"Stop them! Stop them!" shrieked the Poetry Girl.

But beside her Felicia clasping her little hands under her chin, watched with shining eyes; her anger was as the anger of the man who was fighting. She did not realize who he was or why he had come to the defense of her Blythe. She only knew that he was doing exactly what she had been longing to do ever since she had first heard about the acquisitive Mr. Graemer. And when she heard Blythe Modder shouting beside her she began to shout too. Only she did not entreat them to stop fighting. A curious thrill of victory made her voice vibrant with rapture.

"Do not stop striking him! Do not stop!"

And then suddenly, she saw to whom she was calling. And with her new found joy in her heart she shouted still louder, "Strike him much, much more, Dudley Hamilt!"

He stopped, absolutely dazed. He thought that he must be struggling in a dream. He actually stepped across his fallen antagonist as he strode toward her. His blonde hair was rumpled from wrestling, his eyes shone with the light of victory. He stretched out his arms.

"Are you real—" he stammered, "tell me quickly, are you real—"

"I am vairee real—" she answered breathlessly, "but I am old—"

Old! She was agelessly young as she stood there, smiling at him from her perch on the little iron bench. Her slender figure in the sage green frock was silhouetted against the wall, her head was lifted joyously.

It was the young lawyer who came to his senses first. He shoved the disheveled Graemer out through the rear gate, the stable gate—it happened to be open and he took an immense satisfaction in after years in remembering that it was the stable gate, did that cocky young lawyer!

The rest of them fled through the kitchen doorway, or rather Molly O'Reilly adroitly pushed them through it and for the next half hour the household babbled discreetly behind drawn blinds.

But outside in the wee garden the years slipped back as though they had been Time in Maitre Guedron's song.

"Dudley Hamilt! Dear Dudley Hamilt! You are hurting my arms a little— "

"Felice! Forgive me! I didn't mean to—it's only that I am afraid you are not real—I am afraid to let you go—"

Ineffably content she stood tiptoe to put her hands on his shoulders. She lifted her adorable head and smiled.

"Nevaire do—" she murmured with her lips on his.

THE END