of benignity and intelligence.'

Oh, Ambrose"-her eyes were full of dreams-"oh, Ambrose, wouldn't it be just too wonderful for words to have a great, big, beautiful dog like that?"

"There isn't any too much room in this bungalow as it is. Better get a chow."

"You don't seem to realize, Ambrose Dohenny," the lady replied with some severity, "that what I want a dog for is protection."

"Protection, my angel? Can't I protect you?"

"Not when you're away on the road selling your shaving cream. Then's when I need some big, loyal creature to protect me.".

"From what?"

"Well, burglars."

"Why should they come here?"

"How about all our wedding silver? And then kidnappers might come.'

"Kidnappers? What could they kidnap?"

"Me," said Mrs. Dohenny. "How would you like to come home from Zanesville or Bucyrus some day and find me gone, Ambrose?" Her lip quivered at the thought.

To Mr. Dohenny, privately, this contingency seemed

remote. His bride was a plentiful lady of welldeveloped maturity, whose clothes did not conceal her heroic mold, albeit they fitted her as tightly as if her modiste were a taxidermist. However, he was in love; he preferred that she should think of herself as infinitely clinging and helpless; he fancied the rôle of sturdy oak.

"All right, Cordelia," he gave in, patting her cheek. "If my angel wants a dog, she shall have one." "And no mungles for me," she stated flatly. "I hate mungles. I want a thoroughbred or nothing. One with a pedigree, like that adorably handsome creature there."

She nodded toward the engraving of the giant St. Bernards.

"But, darling," objected Mr. Dohenny, "pedigreed pups cost money. A dog can bark and bite whether he has a family tree or not, can't he? We can't afford one of these fancy, blue-blooded ones. I've got notes at the bank right now I don't know how the deuce I'm going to pay. My shaving stick needs capital. I can't be blowing in hard-earned dough on pups." "Oh, Ambrose, I actually believe you-don't-care -whether-I'm-kidnapped-or-not!" his wife began, a catch in her voice. A heart of wrought iron

"Keep 'em up!" commanded the burglar. Mr. Dohenny cast an appealing look at the dog, but Pershing only wagged a friendly tail at the thief

would have been melted by the pathos of her tone and face.

"In how many years?" inquired Mr. Dohenny cynically.

"The man said he'd be big enough to be a watch

dog in a very few months; they grow so fast." "What man said this?"

"The kennel man. I bought Pershing at the Laddieburn-Strathduff Kennels to-day." She paused to kiss the pink muzzle of the little animal; Mr. Dohenny winced at this, but she noted it not, and rushed on:

"Such an interesting place, Ambrose. Nothing but dogs and dogs and dogs. All kinds too. They even had one 'mean, sneaky-looking dachshund there; I just couldn't trust a dog like that. Ugh! Well, I looked at all the dogs. The minute I saw Pershing I knew he was my dog. His little eyes looked up at me as much as to say: 'I'll be yours, mistress, faithful to the death,' and he put out the dearest little pink tongue and licked my hand.

"The kennel man said: 'Now ain't that wonderful, lady, the way he's taken to you? Usually he growls at strangers. He's a one-man dog, all right, all right.""

"A one-man dog?" said Mr. Dohenny blankly. "Yes. One that loves his owner, and nobody else. That's just the kind I want."

"Where do I come in?" inquired Mr. Dohenny. "Oh, he'll learn to tolerate you, I guess," she reassured him. Then she rippled on: "I just had to have him then. He was one of five, but he already had a little personality all his own, although he's only three weeks old. I saw his mother-a magnificent creature, Ambrose, big as a Shetland pony and twice as shaggy, and with the most wonderful, ap'pealing eyes, that looked at me as if it stabbed her to the heart to have her little ones taken from her. And such a pedigree! It covers pages. Her name is Gloria Audacious Indomitable; the Audacious Indomitables are a very celebrated family of St. Bernards, the kennel man said."

"What about his father?" queried Mr. Dohenny, poking the ball of pup with his finger.

"I didn't see him," admitted Mrs. Dohenny. She snuggled the pup to her capacious bosom. "So," she said, "it's whole name is Pershing Audacious Indomitable, isn't it, tweetums?"

"It's a swell name," admitted Mr. Dohenny. "Er -Cordelia dear, how much did he cost?"

She brought out the reply quickly, almost timidly: "Fifty dollars."

"Fif" His, voice stuck in his larynx. "Great Cæsar's ghost!"

"But think of his pedigree," cried his wife.

All he could say was: "Great Cæsar's ghost! Fifty dollars! Great Cæsar's ghost!"

"Why, we can exhibit him at bench shows," she argued, "and win hundreds of dollars in prizes. And his pups will be worth fifty dollars per pup easily, with that pedigree."

"Great Cæsar's ghost," said Mr. Dohenny despondently. "Fifty dollars! And the shaving-stick business all geflooey."

"He'll be worth a thousand to me as a protector," she declared defiantly. "You wait and see, Ambrose Dohenny. Wait till he grows up to be a great, big, handsome, intelligent dog, winning prizes and protecting your wife. He'll be the best investment we ever made, you mark my words."

She began to feed Pershing from a nursing bottle. "Grade A milk, I suppose," groaned Mr. Dohenny. "Cream," she corrected calmly. "Pershing is no mungle. Remember that, Ambrose Dohenny."

There, there, honey," said Mr. Dohenny hastily, after much chattering of teeth, had succeeded in T was a nippy, frosty night, and Mr. Dohenny,

with an appropriate gesture, "you shall have your pup. But remember this, Cordelia Dohenny. He's yours. You are to have all the responsibility and care of him."

"Oh, Ambrose, you're so good to me," she breathed.

HE next evening when Mr. Dohenny came home

brown and fuzzy nestling

in his Sunday velour hat. With a smothered exclamation of the kind that has no place in a romance, he dumped the thing out and saw it waddle away on unsteady legs, leaving him sadly contemplating the strawberry silk lining of his best hat.

"Isn't he a love? Isn't he just too sweet?" cried Mrs. Dohenny, emerging from the living room and catching the object up in her arms. "Come to mamma, sweetie pie. Did the nassy man frighten my precious Pershing?"

"Your precious what?"

"Pershing. I named him for a brave man and a fighter. I just know he'll be worthy of it, when he grows up, and starts to protect me."

getting a place warm in the family bed, and was floating peacefully into a dream in which he got a contract for ten carload lots of Dohenny's Edible Shaving Cream-"Just Lather, Shave, and Lick. That's All!"-when his wife's soft knuckles prodded him in the ribs.

"Ambrose, Ambrose, do wake up. Do you hear that?"

He sleepily opened a protesting eye. He heard faint, plaintive, whining sounds somewhere in the house. "It's that wretched hound," he said crossly. "Pershing is not a hound, Ambrose Dohenny." "Oh, all right, Cordelia, all right. It's that noble creature. G'night."

But the knuckles tattooed on his drowsy ribs again. "Ambrose, he's lonesome."

No response.

"Ambrose, little Pershing is lonesome."
"Well, suppose you go and sing him to sleep."
"Ambrose! And us married only a month!"
Mr. Dohenny sat up

(Continued on page 18)

P

INK, prosperous, well fed, and well dressed,

you would not have expected to find him planted out at a street crossing playing traffic cop. But he was not directing traffic; this was a quiet residential section, with no traffic to direct. Nevertheless, he now and again made strange gestures as though he reminded himself of a semaphore. I thought at first he must have escaped from somewhere. I stopped to watch. Then I discovered he was not alone. Men seemed to be working with him. His strange calisthenics were signals. I saw men on each of the four blocks he commanded from his signal station. He noticed my interest. "Great game this," he remarked affably. "Selling something?"

"You bet I am-household appliances. Folks used to come in and buy, but not any more. Then I hired men and sent them out to sell. But the boys seemed to get discouraged. If the first three or four people on their lists turned them down, they just quit for the day. Somebody's got to scratch, and it might as well be I. Grass was growing on the sales ledger. That's why I'm out here. See all those fellows down the streets-they are my men. I stand here to see that they don't miss a house. They like it too. I guess they don't feel so much alone in the world. When one makes a sale, it bucks up the others. You know it isn't an easy game for a young fellow. The boys are all right-but they are better off with me around."

"How are you making out?"

"Making out! I have learned more in the last two weeks than I ever knew there was to learn. I used to think I knew something about selling, but the last few years I haven't had much occasion to

By Edward N. Hurley

Illustrated by Herbert M. Stoops

go out. I went out because nobody else would, and let me tell you, if I wasn't afraid that some of my children's friends would see me running this show, I'd do nothing else. Every time one of those fellows thinks he is going to hook a fish, but is afraid he can't land, he wigwags to me, and I go down and help him out. Here's what we've done so far to-day." And he pulled out a bunch of order slips about half an inch thick. "But there's a fellow with a bite.

I

Proving His Right to Be Chief

LATER looked the man up. I found he was the president of a sales corporation rated at two million and, as present-day dope goes, he should have been sitting in a mahogany chair fuming about con- / ditions. He even had money enough, so I learned, not to go to the office excepting when he felt like it. He could have been a telephone president and still drawn three meals a day with enough over for club dues. By a "telephone president" I mean one of those master minds that can sit in a library and, delivering a few well-chosen words over the wire, supplemented now and again by a note, skillfully direct the destinies of what he is pleased to call his organization.

Morgan's white-marbled library has had a frightfully bad influence on ever so many men. Some time we shall have to look into and perhaps chronicle the

ravages of the library habit. But this president was not telling his people how to do it; he was showing them. He was setting an example. He was proving his right to leadership. He was proving his right to be chief by the number of scalps hanging from his belt.

All of which may seem to be evidence of a rather crude conception of business. Perhaps it is. I hope so, anyway, for we are developing, unless I do not see aright, far too much refinement. We are getting so refined that those who are directing a considerable share of the country's mercantile affairs have only about tenth-hand notions of what actually is going on. There is no point of personal meeting between the direction of a large corporation and the public it is supposed to serve, and, consequently, the corporation does not serve the public. The lack of service is reflected in the corporate balance sheet. This would not matter much if only the large corporation were concerned, but business all over the country follows leaders. If the big company thinks that a publicity agent or a public-relations counsel will look after the public, then every one of its employees will think likewise, and the influence will spread through all the contacts of those employees. We shall find the small storekeeper, equally with the great corporation president, harping about what the public ought to do and how it ought to act—discussing ways and means to break buyers' strikes and to bring on prosperity instead of finding out for himself what is wrong and making it right. If the public will not buy what I have to sell, is that my fault or the fault of the public?

I am not unmindful that there are certain economic conditions that operate against having very

active business at the present. Those sections of the country which managed to obtain plenty of credit are still rather badly off, and it will take them some time to recover from their credit sprees. If any of those who talk about the necessity of increasing credit facilities want food for thought-and I doubt if they do I would advise them to have a look at North Dakota and compare the conditions there with the conditions in Iowa.

North Dakota got into trouble very quickly with the Nonpartisan League and so tied itself up that the citizens could get very little bank credit. Iowa got almost all the credit it wanted. To-day the creditless North Dakotans have money to spend and the Iowans have debts to pay. There are always people who can buy; they will buy if they are hunted out and sold what meets their tastes and pocketbooks. But they have to be hunted out-they will not come forward of themselves.

IT

T is perfectly absurd to imagine that "Buy Now" campaigns can or will do much of anything. This country has distributed its goods by salesmanshipby meeting the individual with something that he needs and ought to buy. It has always been a personal affair. But now the impression seems to be that selling can be impersonal-that people in the mass can be urged to come forward and buy. And the seller sits and waits.

Salesmen go out, it is true. But do they go out as salesmen or as puppets as part of a "selling plan"? Does the salesman just go out and sell? Not a bit of it. That is entirely too unscientific. The campaign must be planned in its every detail. I am not against planning. It is rather a good thing to plan. The modern sales plan is merely an extension and development of somebody's idea of how sales might be made. is complete in every detail excepting one. Nobody connected with the plan has been in contact with a single customer or has even the remotest idea, excepting from reports, as to what the customer wants.

That might seem to be a serious defect. It is not necessarily so, because about 80 per cent of all the sales plans drawn up have nothing to do with the people who are expected to buy the goods. They are made to sell to the board of directors in the form of a report, and they have to be made that way.

It

The brass-buttons requirements of business as it has developed make it necessary, first of all, for the sales manager to be able to sell his plans to the board. He cannot hold his job unless he does that. The sales manager may be an extremely good manager. He may be perfectly capable and indeed extremely anxious to get out in the field and get selling under way, but in no end of companies that I either know or know about he never has a chance in the world to do anything until first he has persuaded the board of directors. And to do that he must evolve some kind of plan.

A clever man will make up a plan according to whom it has to be sold to. A sales plan that must first be approved by a board may or may not have anything to do with selling to the customer. A clever salesman very quickly gets the number of each of the officers and directors of his company, and he makes his plan to suit their mentalities, and quite regardless of the customer. Then, if he has any time left over, he looks after the actual selling of goods. It is a rare board of directors that knows anything at all about the actual, practical working of the business. This does not make much difference if the board is not active; but, unfortunately, most boards are active when they should be still, and still

board. Somebody started the report that bankers knew something about business. A great number of bankers have taken the news seriously and have become active on boards. There is hardly any class. of men, unless it be lawyers, less equipped by training and experience than are bankers to exercise any intimate day-to-day control over the progress of a business-especially a business in which selling plays a prominent part. The natural tendency of a banker --a proper tendency, because his experience has been in dealing with other people's money-is to play safe and, when in doubt, to do nothing.

he is going to do. He may know in a general way, but he will not want to know in a detailed way, because he refuses to be bound by hard and fast regulations.

He wants a chance to adapt himself to circumstances. He does not care a rap about formulating a business policy that may be admired. He is solely concerned with getting the business. After he has got the business, if somebody wants to come along with a policy that tells just how he got it, he is perfectly willing to agree to the policy. He is perfectly willing to agree to anything that will keep people happy so long as it does not interfere with his actions. Harriman never put a plan into consultation until after he had put the plan into effect.

If you formulate a sales plan and equip the salesmen with standardized talks, and generally conduct á business as though it were an army to be directed from general headquarters, how in the world can you expect any of the privates to have initiative? How can you expect them to do more than give an exhibition drill before what is supposed to be a pros pective customer?

If the customer does not enjoy the drill, why shouldn't the salesman march out in just the way you told him to march in, and then pass the buck to you? If he never sees anyone working, why should he work?

And if the formula given him does not fit, is there anyone around personally to go with him and see what is the trouble? Perhaps a few companies are waking up, but usually nowadays, a salesman in trouble gets the absent treatment.

The exact method of the application of the absent treatment is now becoming pretty well known. There are books written about it. Indeed, I believe, you can buy the whole treatment and, changing only an unimportant detail here and there, give it as deftly as any master.

The principles, or at least part of them, are not new. Some of the old doctors used to have them. If the patient was not getting well, and the doctor did not know what was the matter with him, he would change the dose. If one pill was not turning the trick, he would give him three. If the patient still refused to get well-and obstinate patients have always been one of the outstanding nuisances of the medical profession-then a really clever doctor would change the color of the pills. There must be some relation between color and health. It is worth looking into, but I have never had the time, for why ..otherwise did they devise so many differently colored pills?

But, without giving that subject the full consideration which it merits, I notice that in the new absent treatment for obstinate salesmen the old pill doctors are bobbing up again. But instead of saying it with pills they say it with paper.

If a salesman is not selling, no one thinks of getting on a train and going down and finding out what really is the matter. That is not scientific, and, anyhow, it frightfully cuts into a man's day. How could a really first-class sales manager-a man with any self-respect-pursue a salesman into his lair? Why, the man might be in a one-movie-house townone of those places where the bathtub dates back to the copper era and the food comes in bird baths.

THE

The Three-Day Treatment

HE absent treatment was invented just so that sales managers would not have to ride in hotel busses and hang around railway stations watching the ticket seller-telegraph operator-baggage man change on the blackboard "Train No. 62, 1 hr. 20 min. late" to "Train No. 62, 2 hrs. 36 min. late." The absent treatment avoids all that.

This is the process: The sales manager's secretary, according to instructions, hands up a list of the salesmen who have not made their quotas. Hiram C. Winkler heads the list. Hiram is supposed to be covering southern Indiana, but, while he may be covering it, his record for the past month discloses that he is not doing much of anything else. His expense account shows that he is traveling, but that is the sole evidence that the home office, has that he is not dead. The sales manager knows instantly that he has to wake Hiram up, and he knows just how to do it-how to get some pep into the man. The sales manager does not even have to think about the procedure. He marks Hiram up for the three-day treatment. He has a case requiring three pills.

On the first day he sends him a stimulating letter -a man-to-man affair. It drips with inspiration and good fellowship. The inclination may have been to write a sharp letter, but (Continued on page 24)

T

HE old court officer had to knock on the door a second time before Judge Rodman heard him. This had happened once or twice before of late. The judge had been abstracted since his wife died. Some of those who knew him best thought he seemed at times dazed. She had died two weeks ago, had been buried just before the beginning of this trial. Judge Rodman was obviously not the same man

he had been before her going. The judge did not hear the court officer's first knock this morning because he was thinking. His bulky body was sunk deep in the leather chair before his table; the folds of his black gown fell limply about him. It was going to be a hot day in the courtroom, and he had taken off his street coat and put on the black alpaca thing which he sometimes wore in his office. The gown would hide it, and he would be, thus lightly clad, more comfortable. The judge was a large man, and on a hot day he suffered.

He

He had put on his gown again, and then sat down in his big chair and fallen into meditation. had had a bad night, sleeping but little. His wife had been as much with him as though she were still alive; yet there had been little comfort in this presence of her spirit. Thinking back, this morning, through the final years of their life together, he perceived that for a long time there had been little comfort for him in her companionship. She had seemed, he realized, to set herself apart; she was apt to be silent for long intervals; she spoke little except when he addressed her. A worn and weary old woman.

By Ben Ames Williams

Illustrated by Frank Godwin

Yet not so very old. The judge himself was only in his middle fifties, and he was fourteen years older than she. Other women of her age were not so dull and so silent and so spiritless.

He had loved her, he loved her still, but ever since her death there had been stirring in him, running through his thoughts of her, a faint and indefinable misgiving-a feeling that all had not been well between them. This misgiving assumed at times the proportions of a sense of guilt.

At the second knock of the court officer the judge stirred a little in his chair and looked toward the door and spoke, and the old officer opened the door and said it was time to go into court. The judge nodded, rising slowly to his feet, and he turned himself about while the officer adjusted the folds of his gown. Then he moved out into the corridor toward the courtroom. On the way his trained and ordered mind began to function once more; he picked up the threads of the case which he was trying.

It was murder, he remembered. Brother had killed brother, and the actual killing was admitted. They had been business parters, forced into that relation

by the will of their father, bound for life into an irritating union. There had been provocation for the killing-a succession of bitter, taunting words that had extended over a period of years. The taking of evidence had ended yesterday, the arguments would be heard to-day, and the judge understood well enough what the defense would plead. But he shook his head. It would do no good. The verdict would be first degree; could be nothing else. The arguments, the long wait for the jury, the sentence which it would thereafter be his duty. to impose-these were mere formalities, to be got through with as quickly as possible. He hoped the jury would not stay out too long; the day was certainly going to be terribly hot. The judge shrank a little from the long grind which lay ahead of him. Then the court officer opened his private door, beside the bench, and he passed into the courtroom, while those who were already there stood to do him honor. He heard the crier's drone, mouthing the ancient formula which declared court open for the day, and then he sat down, and everyone else sat down, and there was a moment's wait before the day's work got under way.

A large blue fly buzzed down from an open window at one side of the room and began to fly naggingly about the judge's head. . .

TH

...

HE defense attorney opened his argument. His name was John Hall, and he was perhaps the foremost criminal lawyer in the State. He had been summoned from another city to handle this case,

and there had been some surprise when his connection with it was announced, because the conviction of the man on trial was taken for granted, and John Hall had not often been associated with a losing cause.

Judge Rodman watched this man as he rose to his feet and addressed the bench and then the jury, and he listened to the opening phrases of the other's argument. But at once thereafter his thoughts began to drift away. The very sight of John Hall

was sufficient to evoke memories, almost lost in the dust of the past. This was natural enough, for John Hall had been in love with Elizabeth Tarleton, had been near winning her, when David Rodman swept her off her feet and bore her triumphantly away. John Hall had never married. Those who knew the old story were fond of imagining that this was because he had always loved Bess Tarleton, Judge. Rodman's wife.

The judge wondered this morning if this were true. He and the lawyer had always been friends, in the casual fashion of men who live in different cities and see each other only in the course of business and at intervals of many months. But since this trial opened, almost at once after the funeral of that Bess Tarleton whom both men had loved, Hall had not made occasion to speak to the judge except when the conduct of the cause demanded it, and once or twice Judge Rodman thought he had seen bitterness in the other's eyes. Perhaps

it was true, after all; perhaps John Hall did still love Bess Tarleton. . . .

The judge's memories went back twenty years....

TH

HERE are few men to whom life does not give at least one golden moment: a moment full of glory and beauty and romance. It may endure for only the tick of a watch; it may last for a day or for a week; or it may, with some fortunate folk, stretch into a lifetime. Judge Rodman's golden moment had endured for sixteen days. And it began the first day he saw Bess Tarleton.

He was already a successful lawyer; a solid, substantial man with a lucrative practice and a growing reputation for the logical and judicial qualities of his mind. His vacations were rare; on this one he combined business with recreation. One of his clients was spending the summer at a large hotel upon the northern lakes, and it became necessary for Rodman to consult with him. He came north for that purpose. It was in those years when the automobile was still an absurd-looking and rather impractical experiment. People rode or drove handsome horses. Women used side saddles, and the divided skirt was just making its appearance. Those who affected it were considered daring.

David Rodman and his client were riding along a bridle path which followed the lake shore, when

they saw a man and a girl galloping toward them along the sand, nearer the lake. Rodman's eye was caught by this girl even before she came near enough for him to distinguish her features. She wore a divided skirt, rode astride, and sat her horse as though they had been molded together. Her hat was lost or cast aside, and her hair was somewhat loosened, so that its heavy coils were low about her face, and the thick knot of them rested on the nape of her neck. She passed near enough so that David saw how bright her cheeks were, and he saw the high daring in her eyes. She waved her crop to his companion. The man with her was John Hall, whom David knew. He did not at that moment ask her name, but from that hour he moved under the spell of a glamorous intoxication.

She was Bess Tarleton. No doubt there were other girls at the hotel as beautiful as she was; no doubt there were others who laughed as sweetly. But there was some quality in her, some living fire that set her apart from them all. She had an elfin spirit; never an hour the same. Always changing, now mischievous and now demure, she was living quicksilver. And she set David Rodman all afire, waking in him a capacity for romantic folly which he would not have believed that he possessed.

He met her that evening at the informal dance. They waltzed together, the "Blue Danube." This

was in the days before jazz, when music and melody were kin; it was in the days when to dance was a matter of grace rather than of acrobatics. Their bodies moving in rhythm, David found his mind also attuned to hers. He was able to talk to her as he had never talked to anyone before. She told John Hall, later that evening, that David was thrilling, and John Hall stared at her, then laughed aloud. "Why?" she asked, her eyebrows arching. "Why is that amusing?"

"Dave's a fine fellow and an able lawyer," John told her. "But I never found him 'thrilling.' He's

as steady as a log."

"You don't know him," she retorted gayly. "I've known him well for years," said John Hall. "You've danced a single dance with him."

But Bess insisted: "I know him better than you." They were both right and both wrong. The David Rodman with whom she had danced was not the lawyer whom half the State already admired. Years older than she was, he had the strength of his years, yet had displayed for her a boyish imagination, a quality of laughter and of jest which charmed her. They rode together next day. Rodman had always preferred a decorous trot; that day he galloped for miles. He had always called those men fools who risked their necks for sport; but he put his untried horse at a rail fence, and took it cleanly, Bess at his side. They played like children, yet had their moments of silence when between them a warmer current flowed.

OR the first week he was content to be with her.

For the he nation upon to be whe wr

halfway engaged to John Hall; but the sweep of David's wooing swung her away from the other man, Bess submitted to the taking, happy at being overborne. In such surroundings, in such long, bright days together, ardors spring quickly into flame. At the end of the second week David had not yet asked her to marry him, but he would, and she knew that he would, and she knew what she must say when he should ask her.

There was a masked ball that Saturday night. Bess was Juliet. More than one young man had sought to discover what her costume would be, butshe had told only David, at his urgent asking. He was not yet so large a man as he later became; was slim enough and stalwart enough so that he made an adequate Romeo. She knew him as soon as he came into the ballroom. There were others about her, but he came to her straightaway and led her from them, and as the music began they danced. Something stirred in each of them, but neither spoke at all. Only their eyes met deeply.

He had done a mad thing that day, a thing in keeping with the madness which for a fortnight had possessed him-had conned the lines of the part he was to play. When they were presently alone, and apart upon one of the broad verandas to which he led her, she tugged a little at the hand he still held, as though she would have drawn it away; and David, who had played for this, said softly:

"If I profane with my unworthiest hand She looked up at him quickly, a little startled; he heard her whisper: "Oh!"

"Romeo to Juliet," he told her. "Do you not remember?"

Bess laughed, faintly uneasy. "I do not know the lines," she confessed.

"The lines are nothing," he cried under his breath. Her eyes met his. "No? Then what "This," said David Rodman; and when she did not stir he bent to lift her mask and kissed her.

She stood for a moment very still; he thought she trembled. And then she laughed again, and asked, remembering at last what Juliet had said:

"But do you kiss by the book?"

"By the heart, Bess," he answered, and kissed her again.