The Last Missing Piece

Frank rose and, plunging his hands into his pockets, lounged over to the wide window and gazed out on the wild March storm which was drenching and dismaying Fifth Avenue. A weaving throng of carriages, auto-cars and delivery wagons beat up and down against it, were driven by it from behind, or buffeted from many directions at the corners. Coachmen, footmen and drivers huddled down into their waterproofs; pedestrians tried to breast the rain with their umbrellas and frequently lost them. From where he stood the young man could count five torn and twisted derelicts soaking in gutters.

They seemed so very wet-everything did. When a stage-that relic of another day-lumbered by, the driver on top, only half sheltered by his battered oil-skins, seemed wetter and more dismal than any other object. It all had an art value, certainly, but there were pleasanter things within. The young man turned to the luxurious room, with its wide blazing fire and the young girl who sat looking into the glowing depths.

"Do you know, Constance," he said, "I think you are a bit hard on me." Then he drifted into a very large and soft chair near her, and, stretching out his legs, stared comfortably into the fire as if the fact were no such serious matter, after all.

The girl smiled quietly. She had a rich oval face, with a deep look in her eyes, at once wistful and eager, and just a bit restless, as if there were problems there among the coals-questions she could not wholly solve.

"I did not think of it in that way," she said, "and you should not call me Constance, not now, and you are Mr. Weatherby. I do not know how we ever began-the other way. I was only a girl, of course, and did not know America so well, or realize-a good many things."

The young man stirred a little without looking up.

"I know," he assented; "I realize that six months seems a long period to a-to a young person, and makes a lot of difference, sometimes. I believe you have had a birthday lately."

"Yes, my eighteenth-my majority. That ought to make a difference."

"Mine didn't to me. I'm just about the same now as I was then, and--"

"As you always will be. That is just the trouble."

"I was going to say, as I always had been."

"Which would not be true. You were different, as a boy."

"And who gave you that impression, pray?"

The girl flushed a little.

"I mean, you must have been," she added, a trifle inconsequently. "Boys always are. You had ambitions, then."

"Well, yes, and I gratified them. I wanted to be captain of my college team, and I was. We held the championship as long as I held the place. I wanted to make a record in pole-vaulting, and I did. It hasn't been beaten since. Then I wanted the Half-mile Cup, and I won that, too. I think those were my chief aspirations when I entered college, and when I came out there were no more worlds to conquer. Incidentally I carried off the honors for putting into American some of Mr. Horace's justly popular odes, edited the college paper for a year, and was valedictorian of the class. But those were trivial things. It was my prowess that gave me standing and will remain one of the old school's traditions long after this flesh has become dust."

The girl's eyes had grown brighter as he recounted his achievements. She could not help stealing a glance of admiration at the handsome fellow stretched out before her, whose athletic deeds had made him honored among his kind. Then she smiled.

"Perhaps you were a pillar of modesty, too," she commented, "once."

He laughed-a gentle, lazy laugh in which she joined-and presently she added:

"Of course, I know you did those things. That is just it. You could do anything, and be anything, if you only would. Oh, but you don't seem to care! You seem satisfied, comfortable and good-naturedly indifferent; if you were poor, I should say idle-I suppose the trouble is there. You have never been poor and lonely and learned to want things. So, of course, you never learned to care for-for anything."

Her companion leaned toward her-his handsome face full of a light that was not all of the fire.

"I have, for you," he whispered.

The girl's face lighted, too. Her eyes seemed to look into some golden land which she was not quite willing to enter.

"No," she demurred gently. "I am not sure of that. Let us forget about that. As you say, a half-year has been a long time-to a child. I had just come from abroad then with my parents, and I had been most of the time in a school where girls are just children, no matter what their ages. When we came home, I suppose I did not know just what to do with my freedom. And then, you see, Father and Mother liked you, and let you come to the house, and when I first saw you and knew you-when I got to know you, I mean-I was glad to have you come, too. Then we rode and drove and golfed all those days about Lenox-all those days-your memory is poor, very poor, but you may recall those October days, last year, when I had just come home-those days, you know--"