good-bye. It just makes me want to cry to go away and leave you,— but I just won't! I've made up my mind to be brave now."

Both mother and daughter stood the trial of the departure very well. Marion waved a gay farewell from the carriage window and disappeared around the corner.

She had won the highest prize in the gift of the Normal art school the previous summer. Hence, when her uncle, a prominent New York artist, had seen some of her work, he had insisted that she must come to the metropolis and study under his direction. He wrote that he would not have made the offer had he not felt that she possessed an exceptional gift, which must be cultivated according to the best standards. Mrs. Garrick had been left a widow several years before, with Marion, her only child, as the only motive for continued activity. It was a grievous sacrifice to have her leave the old home, with its surrounding orange groves, the sole means of their support.

Marion's delight was too great to be concealed, and her mother had never raised an objection. "Some day, mother," she said, "I'll come home and work in our golden atmosphere, and we'll lead a lovely life here together, and make loads of money.'

A poignant sense of loneliness took possession of the girl as soon as the porter had shown her the seat in the Pullman. She looked shyly about her, and saw that the passengers were for the most part older than she, and were about evenly divided between men and women, several of them being married couples. There was no danger ous young man in view.

Could she have looked behind her, she would have seen the only young man in the coach, for Morrison Galbraith had entered unobtrusively a few moments later. He was the junior member of the large wholesale fruit firm of Parkinson & Galbraith, and was returning East after buying the crops of several large orange growers in the vicinity of Los Angeles.

Having taken his seat he promptly opened a magazine and began to read. Occasionally he looked up at the figure in front of him. When the porter passed Marion had asked to have the window opened, and as she moved from her seat Galbraith saw her eyes. After that there was nothing that appealed to his interest in the magazine. He was not the kind of travelling business man to obtrude his presence on an unchaperoned young woman. He had been carefully reared, having passed through Harvard with credit, both in the class room and on the athletic field. He had been destined for business, and when he returned from his graduation, his father promptly left his money in the firm, retired from active participation in the business, and putting Morrison in his place, started on a tour of the world.

He also received a parting admonition from his father not to indulge in any feminine fancies until he was many years older.

"I am not a believer in the old-fashioned notion of marrying young," he had said. "The divorce courts make it too easy to get unmarried in these days. I should be very much disappointed to have you think of marriage for several years yet."

Morrison was apparently in no

need of the warning, for he had been in business for three years now and was fast pushing Parkinson & Galbraith into the front rank.

His father had been much gratified when Sam Parkinson, his old partner, wrote him: "We used to think we knew something about the fruit business, but your boy alone has put more life into this firm than we ever did together. He's a wonder, and if you are surprised at the dividends I am sending to you, you will have to thank him." But Morrison claimed to have learned all he knew about the fruit business on the football gridiron.

When he returned to his magazine he found the wonderful magnetism of the blue eyes in front of him more and more compelling, although he could not see them through the heavy knot of fair hair.

Then the slam of the window in Marion's section caused him to jump.

The train had started a few minutes before, and he had noticed that she threw a light cape about her shoulders and had drawn closer to the window. The porter was not near as she struggled to disengage herself from the garment which had caught in the window. It would have been inexcusable in him not to have offered his assistance. He stepped quickly from his seat.

"May I assist you?" he asked politely, raising his hat.

"Oh, certainly, if you would be so kind!"

She moved into the aisle, and he endeavored to move the obstinate window, but to his embarrassment it would not stir. Again and again he braced his heavy shoulders to the task, but the wedge of cloth held it too firmly. He worked per

sistently and the passengers began to take that irritating kind of interest so provoking to one endeavoring to perform the impossible. Marion had ample opportunity to note that he was an uncommonly fine looking man. Her mother's warning passed through her mind and she wondered if this was an "extroadinary" occasion. There was no doubt that Morrison Galbraith was putting a wonderful amount of muscular work into his task. Then the porter appeared.

"I'm afraid that you won't be able to move it," Morrison said, as he surrendered his place to the other.

"Oh, I'll fix it all right, sah!" This, with an art that made Galbraith writhe, he proceeded to do, and the garment was removed from the window.

"You were very kind to work so hard over it," Marion managed to say, while she was wondering why so much strength amounted to so little.

"I didn't know the trick," Galbraith replied. "I am sorry to have appeared so useless. One would suppose the training of a football player would show up to better advantage."

There is nothing that incites feminine idolatry so promptly as football. All the warnings that had been given to Marion vanished in an instant. She could not resist the temptation to be mischievous.

"It isn't possible that a car window could get the better of a football player!" she cried.

He colored painfully. "It would be useless for me to defend myself," he said humbly, "yet I was for three years full back on the Harvard 'Varsity eleven!" He felt almost sorry that he had spoken, but the

sudden desire to palliate his apparent weakness had prompted the effort to excuse himself.

"Then you may have known Homer Wilcox, my cousin-"

"Homer Wilcox! Yes, indeed. He was captain my first year, when I went on the team. We used to

tell him it was a Homeric game when he played. I guess Yale thought so, too."

"Then you must be Morrison Galbraith!"

"How could you tell?" he asked eagerly.

"I think it must have been the intuitive powers of my sex," she laughed; "but really, Homer has often talked football to me,—and weren't you captain of the team after him?"

His distress over the incident of the window had vanished now, and his face glowed at the remembrance of his football days.

is getting along splendidly with his law practice. Homer will be a power in New York some time."

Almost unaware of the act, he had seated himself opposite to Marion, and was rapidly yielding to the conquest of her beauty.

"I am going on to study art under my uncle," Marion continued. with the feminine penchant to relate her history.

"That surèly means a high place in the artistic world. Edwards Wilcox is noted for his pupils, and he won't hazard his reputation by taking a student who has not shown the ability to do something."

"I hope I shall."

"I am sure you will, Miss WilCOX-"

"I am Marion Garrick. But what makes you think I shall accomplish anything in art?"

He looked into her eyes searchingly. "One sometimes feels another's artistic gift,-when it has been generously bestowed."

"How delightfully expressed!" she exclaimed.

"I think anyone would regard it as an entirely natural remark," he answered. The porter had lighted the lamps, and was already making up some of the berths, and fearing that it might be unpleasant for him to remain longer he rose to go.

"I trust I may yet be of some service to you, Miss Garrick, before we reach the end of our journey across the continent."

"I am sure that you will make it much shorter. It makes it seem such a little bit of a world, such happenings as this." She put out her hand in the frank, western way, and he returned to the section behind her.

Marion took out her portfolio and

began a letter in pencil to her mother. But she had only written a line or two when she paused to think. All her good intentions had flown to the winds. It was such an "extroadinary" meeting, that she did not think it could be laid to the door of her inclination to encourage the society of entertaining, attractive young men, which had given her mother so many anxious hours. Yet if she wrote her about it, she would feel it was the same old story, and worry until she knew of her arrival in New York City.

The next day naturally found the pair together, talking merrily, frankly expressing their tastes and opinions, on all manner of topics. Then Marion suggested a game of cutthroat euchre, and the day was ended almost before they realized where it had gone. They passed together into the dining car, and Galbraith found the pleasure of lingering over his cigar much less than usual.

The matrons on the Pullman looked upon the acquaintance with disapproval, and one of them, who was always looking for an opportunity to do good in this world, and generally did quite the opposite, came over to Marion while Galbraith was in the smoking apartment. She volunteered some generalities regarding the danger of making acquaintances while travelling, to which Marion listened dumbly. Then she burst forth volubly and overwhelmed the wellintentioned lady with tales of her ambitions, and of what a wonderfully clever man her cousin's friend. was, and how fortunate it was she could be "intrusted to his care" on her long trip.

"I didn't know that you knew

him before," the woman replied pointedly, bringing the conversation down to a specific basis; and: had not Galbraith appeared at this juncture, Marion would have met with difficulty in longer suppressing her anger.

Her would-be protectress very promptly relinquished her post as Galbraith came to Marion's section.

"She thinks I am a very imprudent young woman," she whispered, as she prepared the lapboard for another game. "It may be wrong, but I have always hated such people."

"Well, if this is imprudence, it certainly has a very delightful quality. It would have been frightful to have had to sit back there all through this trip, and just be allowed to look-er-at your back hair."

"I would have had nervous prostration in two days. It just drives me wild-to have a man back of me -staring. I am always sure that my back hair is-untidy-or something is wrong."

"But I wouldn't have stared. I am on my good behavior until I am older. My father would sail for home at once if he knew that I was

coming all the way from Los Angeles with a-well, he'd have to admit, when he'd seen you, that it was a mighty dangerous proximity."

"Yes? But it is propinquityisn't it?-that is considered dangerous," she laughed.

"There is always danger, you know, when a man is thrown within reach of a certain kind of eyes."

"And mine?"

"I don't believe in encouraging young women to be vain."

"My mother, I believe, has informed me that the worst has been done on that score, so you might as well answer my question." She had