belief, and anger flowing in quick waves across her face. The three men held their breaths. Moreland, Senior, took a step toward her; Mr. Farnam's mouth dropped a little open as he waited, panic-stricken, for the expected crash.
But it did not come. Ardita's face became suddenly radiant, and with a little laugh she went swiftly to young Moreland and looked up at him without a trace of wrath in her gray eyes. "Will you swear," she said quietly "That it was entirely a product of your own brain?"
"I swear," said young Moreland eagerly.
She drew his head down and kissed him gently.
"What an imagination!" she said softly and almost enviously. "I want you to lie to me just as sweetly as you know how for the rest of my life."
The negroes' voices floated drowsily back, mingled in an air that she had heard them singing before.
"Time is a thief;
Gladness and grief
Cling to the leaf
As it yellows—"
"What was in the bags?" she asked softly.
"Florida mud," he answered. "That was one of the two true things I told you."
"Perhaps I can guess the other one," she said; and reaching up on her tiptoes she kissed him softly in the illustration.
