The Breath of the Gods. Sidney McCall

to an "unconscious" pose, as perfect as the bold lines of the chair and her own graceful figure could combine to produce. She looked down upon the orchids with a thoughtful, pensive gaze, then slowly upward to the speaker. "Ah, was it then—you—who sent them?"

      "Yes; didn't you know? Was it too cheeky, having met you but a glorious once?"

      No reply. Gwendolen lifted the flowers and brushed her soft lips across them. Her companion drew himself erect among the drooping green shadows of the fern, swallowed hard, and asked, in a chastened voice, "Did that bloomin' blot of a florist forget to put my card in, after all I said?"

      Gwendolen's upraised eyes were now those of a commiserating dove. "I'm sorry, but I did not see any card among the flowers."

      The fern had a short ague and stood still. "I'll take a surgeon along when I go to see that florist."

      "I wouldn't," said the girl, pityingly. "It was the loveliest sheaf I ever saw. He deserves something better than broken bones for arranging it."

      "Yes, they were jolly. They must have pleased you," said the young man, with a wintry gleam of resignation. "I was bent on finding something that really looked like you. I went all over Washington, New York, and Philadelphia in person. But I was so careful of the card! I told the foo—the man, over and over again, to be sure and enclose it. It was printed out in full—'T. Caraway Dodge, First Secretary of American Legation, Tokio, Japan.'"

      "You think you have found something that looks just like me?" asked the girl, slowly, ignoring the latter half of his speech. Her face was full of deprecating interest. She daintily drew forth a single strange blossom, and held it, poised for contrast, against the dark leaves of the fern. Thus detached, it bore an unfortunate resemblance to a ghostly spider.

      "Oh, not stuck off on a cork, like that!" cried the tortured donor. "All in a lump, don't you know—beaten up like the whites of eggs, with gold-dust sprinkled over, and parsley around the edges!"

       "All in a lump—beaten up like eggs—parsley around the edges," began Gwendolen, gravely, when suddenly she tripped and fell against her own laughter. Her pretty shoulders quaked. She bent far over for control, and tried to hide the treacherous mirth.

      But Dodge had seen enough for him. "By Jiminy! you've been jollying me all the time! And I swallowed it like a bloomin' oyster!" He came around to the front, drew up a stool, flung himself upon it, and looked up with grins that bespoke a renewed zest for life. "Now honest, Miss Todd, you owe me something for this. Didn't you know who sent them? Didn't you really find that card in the box?"

      "No, I didn't—honest—but—m-mother did!" confessed Gwendolen, now half-stifled with laughter.

      "And you didn't resent it? And you thought them pretty from the very first moment?" cried the youth, on a high note of satisfaction. He reached up now boldly, took the single flower from her hand, pinched off the end of a long fern-leaf to back it, and deliberately arranged himself a button-hole.

      Gwendolen wiped the tears of merriment from her bright eyes. "Pretty?" she echoed. "It is too tame a word. I thought them a dream—an inspiration—a visual ecstasy!"

      "Yes, I said they were like you," returned the impudent Dodge, as well as he could for the distorted countenance bent above the process of pinning in his flower. "There," he said, anent this finished operation, "it's in. I think it becomes me. I didn't run my finger to the bone but once. Now tell me what ma-ma thought of the flowers and the card?"

      In spite of her usual self-possession, the girl was stricken dumb. To add to her confusion, a deep embarrassing blush rose relentlessly to her throat and face, and would not be banished.

      "You won't repeat it!" cried the terrible youth. "You don't dare to—but I will. Mama said—lifting her lorgnettes (here he deliberately mimicked the air of a middle-aged grande dame)—'T. Caraway Dodge! Who is T. Caraway Dodge? Oh, I see—a snip of an attaché!'"

      A look into the stupefied face above him showed that his bold guess had been true. Intoxicated by success, he ventured another toss.

      "If you say the word, I come pretty near repeating your answer."

      Behind the astonishment, then the consternation of the girl's face, a harder something flashed. She was not accustomed to have the lead so rudely taken. This young person must be disposed of on the instant. His impudence would have given points to Jonah's gourd. She now rose to her feet, held her chin unnecessarily high, and, with the air of a young Lady Macbeth, drawled out—"I will spare you the trouble, Mr. T. Caraway Dodge. Much as I dislike to be rude, the words I said were these—" She paused. Dodge rose too. The brown eyes and the hazel were nearly on a level. He was laughing. "Well?" he reminded at length.

      His unconsciousness of offence gave the last flare to her indignation.

      "I said to those present, 'The sending of so costly a bouquet by Mr. Dodge is a little—er—pushing, and the sender must be told so; but since, by accident—the flowers just happen to suit my gown—'"

      "Nonsense!" laughed the rash Dodge, "you never talked that way in your life, unless you deliberately made it up. That's your stunt now, of course. Any one could see it. What is more likely, you said—what I planned for you to say was—'Oh, here are the flowers I have been waiting for! I think I'll have to marry the person who sent me these!—There's the music of the first waltz! It's a peach! Come—you haven't promised it, have you? Everybody is waiting for the hostess to begin. Let us start the ball rolling!"

      In sheer incapacity to resist, a weakness wrought of a benumbing conflict of anger, mirth, and amazement, Gwendolen leaned to him—and her débutante ball opened with her, joyous, whirling in the arms of Mr. T. Caraway Dodge.

      After this initial favor, he was rigidly, even scornfully, ignored; but little cared Dodge for that. He had had his day. The impetus given could carry him smiling on through hours of cold neglect. He was determined to be the gayest of that circling round of joy, and succeeded. Stout matrons, lean old maids, Chinese, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Peruvian, Pole—just so it wore skirts and could move its feet, all were food for his new mill of ecstasy.

      Gwendolen danced oftenest with Pierre. He was literally a perfect dancer, and to-night he said that the champagne all went to his heels. Yuki, in her decorous Japanese draperies, wound about by stiff brocades, did not attempt foreign dancing.

      Haganè and the older members of the suite left early. Hirai, the secretary, remained, evidently charmed by the long eyes of his young countrywoman. During the time she was not talking to him or Pierre, Yuki remained near Mrs. Todd, delighting the soberer friends who came to speak with them by her beauty and intelligence. In the pleasure of seeing this enjoyment of her Oriental protégé, Mrs. Todd forgot to scold about the affair of the Russian minister, and made only one remark about Yuki's undignified and un-American "kow-tow" to the prince.

      "I was just pushed down, Mrs. Todd," protested Yuki, earnestly. "Some hand from my own land pressed me before I knew. So was I taught to greet our feudal daimyo when I was the very little girl; so all in Nippon, of old customs, greet him now. I will try never again to do such a thing in America."

      "Well, well, that's all right!" said the matron, patting her slim shoulder. "You are a good little girl, if you did kow-tow. There's Gwendolen with Pierre again! Doesn't she look well to-night?"

      "Well!" echoed Yuki, as her eyes followed the flying shapes. "'Well' is so faint a little word. To me Gwendolen looks beautiful—beautiful—like the Sun Goddess in our land. She is like a bush of yama-buki in the wind! I never saw nobody at all so beautiful as our Gwendolen!"

      "And to think she must give up this brilliant social success, and go to a heathen country for four years!" mused Mrs. Todd, gloomily. She had, of course, been told the great news.

      If Yuki heard the muttered words, she did not show resentment. The smile of intense affection had not left her face as she said aloud: "Anywhere that Gwendolen goes, I think she will find happiness. She has in her eyes the light of a happy karma. Evil and sorrow cannot stay with her long."

      "Well,