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FIDELIA

tive way; she was profiled to him before the window. "Why, I'll think up a place now, if I must!"

"I've one all thought out," Dave assured, "for both of us."

"Aren't you going right off to business?"

"Not to-day." And he didn't.

He took her to Marshall Field's luncheon room; not at all a daring place, but a pleasant one particularly as they arrived rather after the shoppers' noon hour. They had a table in the cool Narcissus room near the quiet fountain with the wide basin of water-flowers and lily pads. The tables near them became deserted. They ordered the same things, sharing them in the intimacy of split "portions."

"It's funny," said Fidelia, as she served him half of an order put before her, "how one likes things dainty like this, everything crisp, just right, nothing burnt or soggy; and then you'll call the best dinner you ever had a camp supper scorched black in places."

He was watching her hands, her beautiful, strong hands, capable, but which obeyed and never guided.

"You cooked that supper?" he asked.

"Well, I helped."

"It was in Idaho, I suppose."

"Yes."

With that word, she shut off further question in the gentle yet wholly final way she had. Dave explained to himself, "Because the man she had it with, is dead." And he was jealous of that man, though dead.

"I've never had a camp supper," he said. "But I'm