On the night following Stuart worked late in his office, developing his great case. He was disappointed in the final showing of the evidence to be presented to the Grand Jury. His facts were not as strong as he expected to make them.

At ten o\'clock he quit work and hurried home to refresh his tired spirit with Harriet\'s music. He could think more clearly while she played for him.

As he hurried up the steps he suddenly collided with a handsome young fellow just emerging from the door.

His first hope was that he had crippled a lodger. He hated the sight and sound of them. He had always felt their presence in the house an unpardonable intrusion. A second look showed him that the youngster who had hurried down the steps with profound apologies and much embarrassment was not a lodger. He was dressed too handsomely and he had evidently been calling on some one.

Perhaps on Harriet!

A sudden fear gripped his heart. He felt like following him to the corner and demanding his reasons for such impudence.

Where had he seen that boy\'s face?

Somewhere, beyond a doubt. But he couldn\'t place him.

He let himself in softly and started at the sight of Harriet\'s smiling face framed in the parlor doorway. His worst fears were confirmed. She was dressed in a dainty evening gown and had evidently enjoyed her visitor.

Stuart pretended not to notice the fact and asked her to play.

He fell lazily into an arm chair while the deft fingers swept the keys. As he sat dreaming and watching the rhythmic movement of her delicate hands, he began to realize at last that his little pal, stub-nosed, red haired and freckled, had silently and mysteriously grown into a charming woman. He wondered what had become of the stub-nose? It seemed to have stretched out into perfect proportions. The freckles had faded into a delicate white skin of creamy velvet. And what once threatened to be a violent red head had softened into beaten gold.

But the most charming feature of all was the deep spiritual tenderness of her eyes, blue sometimes, gray and blue sometimes, but always with little brown spots in them which Nature seemed to have dropped by accident the day she painted them. Stuart always imagined she had picked up a brown brush by mistake. He thought with a sudden pang of the possibility of losing her. She was twenty-three now, in the pride and glory of perfect young womanhood, and yet she had no lovers. He wondered why? Her music of course. It had been the one absorbing passion of life. Her progress had been slow for the first years, while at college. But during the past two years of training every lesson seemed to tell. He had watched her development with pride and brooding tenderness. And her eyes had always sparkled with deep joy at his slightest word of praise. For the first time it had occurred to him as an immediate possibility that she mig............