said frankly that you knew no Magyar, having been exiled as a child, cut off from friends and kindred, to be adopted by a chance stranger in a foreign land. It is one of the pathetic points of your story, that with all your passionate love of your country, you cannot speak your father's tongue. You shall never be tripped up. I can provide for everything."

"Denys, people like you either change the map of Europe or end behind prison bars."

"I want to keep up the Hungarian fiction, because if she finds that false she may think you false. It's no harm to pretend that you 're a Hungarian. It's of no consequence that you are an American. Count's son, cook's son, what matter, so long as you are the man she thinks you are?" Denys was racing up and down the room, his swift thoughts driving him. "We all love the uniforms, and the flags, and the music of the band. But we love them because they tell us how brave men die for a cause. The regiment that did n't go to the front is the showiest in town, but it marches through silent streets. The outward show is just the symbol. We have dull eyes, and we must be helped to see. Margery's eye is caught by the symbol, the

romance of the Magyar patriot, but what fires her heart is what underlies the romance-the high ideals, the unselfishness, the loyalty. You can't be Hungarian-born-what does that matter? You can be Tolna-the Tolna she sees."

"What of it? I don't love her."

"Love will come. It can't help but come. A stone would love her. It is the law of life that we love whom we serve."

"But scarcely whom we cheat. Though you might, Denys. You could marry a girl you did n't love, to save her feelings. You'd make it a sort of game never to let her suspect, and you'd enjoy your good acting so much that you 'd be as happy as a lark all day long, and end by believing your own pretense. Whereas I should feel a fraud and a fool, and sulk like a surly bear, and end by taking French leave."

"Is nothing to be sacred from your flippancy?"

"I've suppressed a good deal of it for your sake, Denys, because I see that to you it's tragedy. To me it 's farce."

"Can you jest at a girl's pure love?"

"Denys, if you wanted to rouse all my callousness and defiance and bad temper, you

could n't do better than to tell me of some one who is smitten with Tolna. What I feel for any girl who falls in love over the footlights is sheer disgust."

Denys turned white.

Disgust? Margery! You damn yourself, not her. Your vulgar mind turns everything to vulgarity. Everything high and fine you smirch with your own commonness." Maurice laughed out:

"And this is the man you put forward as Tolna!"

EVE

CHAPTER IX

NOT TO THE PURPOSE

VERY morning, unless she was very tired after a party, or unless she preferred riding or skating, or felt it her duty to write up the minutes of the Girls' Friendly, or really must do shopping, or see the girls who dropped in-every morning, theoretically, Margery took her violin and went to practise with Hyacinth Lawrence. On the day after her talk with Denys she actually did go.. She had heard that work is the best cure for a distraught mind. She foresaw that she might even determine to confide in her wiser friend.

Miss Lawrence lived alone in a dingy but eminently respectable apartment-house, just east of Fifth Avenue. Her flat was tiny, but, as Hyacinth said, it did what her father's huge Westchester mansion could never do-it expressed her individuality. The different styles of the different rooms, and the frequency with which she changed them all, suggested that multiple personality which is the despair of the psychologists. The miniature

dining-room had fallen a victim to "sincerity," as conceived by the makers of “mission furniture. It was an obstacle-race to get round the huge chairs, while the table from which Hyacinth nibbled reed-birds and soufflés would have supported an ox roasted whole. Her bedroom looked like the inside of a jewel-box. "The soul of a bedroom must be expressed in daintiness," said the soulful one. Beyond this was her Japanese room. Tokonoma, kakemona, makemona, all were here, and their accomplished owner appeared to know which was which. Other furnishings there were none, save two thin blue cushions on the matting. It was Hyacinth's habit to receive visitors in this room. Whom she liked, she at once led into her sanctum. Whom she did not, she invited, with her impenetrable gravity, to an anemic cushion. When she first set up for herself her unorthodox gods, curiosity kept her door-bell a-twitter from morning till night. By the second winter it rang only for her friends.

The sanctum was the one large room. Built for a studio, it received its sole light from the lofty ceiling. Hyacinth disapproved of windows. She pronounced that this seclusion from even a glimpse of the whirling world