At his words Cecilia's heart turned over, but she remembered her eccentric, dear, and much-loved father, and a certain brick. 

 "You promised," she reminded him.  "I said after two months, when I knew you. You promised." 

 "I'll be good," he answered dismally, "but I know you, and it's hard to think of waiting. There isn't any question of time. You're just——, well, I'm thirty-two. I'd never dreamed that I could feel this. I want to kneel when I think of you. I——" he stopped. 

 Cecilia drew a deep breath. They looked at each other, and the world ceased for them. They were only a chord stretched to breaking,—a chord for Heaven's tunes. 

 CHAPTER IX HOME 

 "I tell Celie, it ain't like we couldn't buy 'em perfect.  (I could pay for 'em whole.)  But she sez that ain't it." 

 Jeremiah Madden surveyed a Greek Venus as he spoke, whose arms were quite lacking. "As fer me," he went on, "I like 'em with all their limbs with 'em,—tasty and neat. This here kind of thing makes me think of the War. There's one in the Eyetalian garden I'm going to buy a cork leg for." 

 The young men who surrounded Jeremiah Madden laughed loudly. The loudness of their laughter made Jeremiah a bit suspicious at first, but he reasoned they would hardly accept his hospitality and laugh at him,—it must be with him. So, vastly pleased and beaming widely, he went on with pleased pride: "This here garden cost me near a million, fixings and all. That fountain to the right (the one with the dinky bird settin' on the female's arm) cost me——" but he didn't finish, for Johnny came around the corner of a path and emerged from its boxwood protection with a cough, and then a loud inanity. He frowned on Jeremiah and the laughter of the young men stopped. 

 "I didn't know you were here," he said coolly to the quaking Jeremiah. Jeremiah realised that he had displeased, and began unsurely, "I'll be gettin' back to work. I just left fer a few minutes, I——" 

 "Come on," broke in Johnny, and the group of tired-looking youths followed him, leaving Jeremiah confiding to the stone "female" of his work and of how he must get back to it. Realising himself alone, he swallowed his words, and watched the group disappear toward the tennis courts with a puzzled hurt in his face.... A half a mile away, and well below, the waters of the Sound shone brazen blue in the sunlight. Sometimes a gull swooped low, and 

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