PETER brought Katherine the engagement ring a few days afterward. The drifting had ceased abruptly, and he felt the new sense of reality as most salutary. His personality and hers now filled the horizon; their relations demanded a healthy condensation of thoughts before expanded in wandering infinity, and he was thankful for the consciousness of definite duty and responsibility that made past years seem the refinement of egotism.

Katherine looked almost roguishly gay that afternoon, and, even after the ring was exclaimed over, put on, and Peter duly kissed for it, he felt that there was still an expression of happy knowingness not yet accounted for.

“The ring wasn’t a surprise, but you have one for me, Katherine.”

Katherine laughed out at his acuteness.

“The ring is lovely; clever, sensitive Peter!”

“You have quite convinced me of your pleasure and my own good taste. What is the news?”

“Well, Peter, a delightful thing has happened, or is going to happen, rather. Allan Hope is coming to Paris next week! Peter, we may have a double wedding!”

“Hilda has accepted him?”

“Oh, we have not openly discussed it, you know. Mamma got his letter this morning; very short. He hoped to see us all by Wednesday. Of course, mamma is charmed. Hilda said nothing, and went off to the studio as usual; but Hilda never does say anything if she is really feeling.”

“Doesn’t she?” There was a musing quality in Odd’s voice.

“I think the child is in love with him; I thought so from the first. Wednesday! A week from to-morrow! Oh, of course she will have him!” Katherine said jubilantly.

“Allan isn’t the man to fail in anything. He has a great deal of determination.”

“Yes, he seems the very embodiment of success, doesn’t he? That is because he doesn’t try to see everything at once, like some people I know.” And Katherine nodded her head laughingly at her fiancé. “Intellectual epicureanism is fatal. Allan Hope has no unmanageable opinions. His party can always count on him. He is always there, unchanged—unless they change! He pins his faith to his party, and verily he shall have his reward! By mere force of honest mediocrity he will mount to the highest places!”

“Venomous little Katherine! What are you trying to insinuate?”

“Why, that Lord Allan isn’t particularly clever, nor particularly anything, except particularly useful to men who can be clever for him. He is the bricks they build with.”

“Allan is as honest as the day,” said Peter, a little shortly.

“Honest? Who’s a denygin’ of it, pray? His honesty is part of his supreme utility. My simile holds good; he is a brick; a dishonest man is a mere tool, fit only to be cast away, once used.”

“How rhetorical we are!” said Odd, smiling at her with a touch of friendly mockery.

“Lord Allan most devoutly believes that in his party lies the salvation of his country,” Katherine pursued. “Oh, I have talked to him!”

“You have, have you? Poor chap!” ejaculated Peter. “Will you ever serve me up in this neatly dissected way, as a result of our confidential conversations?”

“Willingly! but only to yourself. Don’t be afraid, Peter. I could dissect myself far more neatly, far more unpleasantly. I have a genius for the scalpel! And I have said nothing in the least derogatory to Allan Hope. He couldn’t disagree with his party, any more than a pious Catholic could disagree with his church. It is a matter of faith, and of shutting the eyes.”

If Hilda was so soon to pass to the supreme authority of an accepted lover, Peter felt that for his own satisfaction he must make the most of the time left him, and solve the riddle of her occupations. That delicate sense of loyal reticence had held him from a hinted question to even Katherine. If Katherine were as ignorant as he, a question would arouse and imply suspicion. Odd could suspect Hilda of nothing worse than a silly disobedience founded on a foolish idea of her own artistic worth; a dull self-absorption, unsaved by a touch of humor. Yet this very suspicion irritated Odd profoundly; it seemed logical and yet impossible. He felt, in his very revulsion from it, a justification for a storming of her barriers.

That very evening, while Katherine played Schumann, the Captain having gone out and Mrs. Archinard dozing on the sofa, he determined to have the truth if possible.

Hilda stood behind her sister, listening. Her tall slenderness looked well in anything that fell in long lines, even if made by the most petite of petite couturières, as the gray silk had been. The white fichu covered deficiencies of fit, and left free the exquisite line of her throat. Her head, in its attitude of quiet listening, struck Odd with the old sense of a beauty significant, not the lovely mask of emptiness.

“Come and sit by me, Hilda,” he said from his place on the sofa, “you can hear better at this distance.”

The quick turn of her head, her pretty look of willingness were charming, he thought.

“I like to see you in that dress,” he said, as she sat down beside him on the sofa, “there isn’t a whiff of paint or palette about it, except that, in it, you look like a picture, and a prettier one than even you could paint.”

“That is a very subtle insult!” Hilda’s smile showed a most encouraging continuation of the pretty willingness.

“You see,” said Odd, “you are not fair to your friends. You should paint fewer pictures, and be more constantly a picture in yourself.” She showed a little uneasy doubtfulness of look.

“I am afraid I don’t understand you. I am afraid I am stupid.”

“You should be a little more, and act a little less.”

“But to act is to be,” said Hilda, with a sudden laugh. “We are not listening to Schumann,” she added, a trifle maliciously. Her face turned toward him in a soft shadow, a line of light just defining the cheek’s young oval, the lovely slimness of the throat affected Odd with a really rapturously artistic appreciation. The shape of her small head, too, with its high curves of hair, was elegant with an intimate elegance peculiarly characteristic. An inner gentle dignity, a voluntary submission to exterior facts of existence resulting in a higher freedom, a more perfect self-possession, seemed to emanate from her; the very poise of her head suggested it, and so strong and so sudden was the suggestion that Odd felt his curiosity intolerable, and those groping suspicions outrageously at sea.

“Hilda,” he said abruptly, “I went to your studio the other afternoon. You were not there.”

Her finger flashed warningly to her lip, and her glance towards h............