Patricia had got into her apple-blossom dress and had smiled at herself with a good deal of real satisfaction.

"You do look very nice," she said to the girl in the mirror. "If you were only a little bit less addicted to yourself, my child, you'd not be half bad. That's a thing you're going to get over, though, so I won't scold you tonight about it."

She shut off the light and sat down by the window to watch the first arrivals. The night was warm, even for spring, and the window was open.

"It's just like being at the play," she told herself, smiling into the warm darkness. "I'm glad I had to wait for Doris."

The courtyard was light with torches and the entrance was ablaze with torches and the windows across the quadrangle she could see figures moving to and fro, shadows fell on the curtained oblongs and inside the open ones she saw girls who were late in dressing getting frantically ready, others who were putting on their gloves, and still others with their guests even making ready to go down to the ball-room, which was the transformed tea-room not to be seen from Patricia's point of vantage.

Maids came and went across the courtyard. The first guests came in a straggling fashion, and then suddenly everyone seemed to be rushing in at once. Patricia laughed as she recognized the tall, lanky figure of Bob Wetherill, whose attachment to Rosamond Merton was the bane of that young lady's life. Then she gave a little cry. She had recognized Bruce and Elinor.

She flew down to them for a rapturous greeting and though the courtyard was filled with hurrying people she hugged both of them heartily, dropping some tears of real delight on her own apple blossoms.

"I'll be down later," she told them. "I'm waiting for Doris Leighton. Do look after Mr. Long if he comes in before I do, and for goodness sake tell him not to breathe a word about what I was talking to him about in the Park the other day."

"Mysteries, and with your late rival in the hen-yard?" cried Bruce with feigned concern. "I'll have to look into this later, Miss Pat, and see what you've been up to behind our backs."

"You'll find out later, I hope," laughed Patricia, giving Elinor another squeeze before she ran off laughing at the thought of her conspiracy with Mr. Long coming under Bruce's notice in this unexpected way.

"I had to tell him," she thought, as she hurried back to her post. "He might have found it out before it came to anything and then I'd have felt so silly."

As she sat down again she thought she heard the door open and she asked, "Is that you, Constance?"

It was Judith with her kimono over her nightdress and her bare feet poked into her slippers. She came over and cuddled down beside Patricia.

"Don't send me back right away, please. I have something to tell you, Miss Pat," she said earnestly, and Patricia made room for her on the wide seat.

"What is it, Judy-pudy?" she asked kindly. "Bad dreams?"

Judith gave a little sound that seemed to mean satisfaction with the question. "Oh, no, not bad dreams," she answered happily, cuddling closer. "Not bad dreams. Very pleasant ones. About you, Patricia."

Patricia patted her. "Tell me," she said, not because she wanted to hear the dream, but to please Judith.

"I dreamed," began Judith, sitting up to look earnestly in Patricia's face in the dim light reflected from the courtyard. "I dreamed that you were unhappy and it was because you thought that you would never be a real singer."

Patricia interrupted her with a little laugh. "Sounds perilously like wide-awake news to me, Ju," she said lightly, determined to conquer the idea which possessed her small sister that she was unhappy over her discovery of failure. "We've put that on the shelf long ago, you and I."

Judith went on, scanning her face. "I dreamed that you cried about it when no one saw you and that you felt you'd never be happy again. Now don't say 'Stuff,' for it's true. And I couldn't bear it, so I thought and thought and then I went out and walked straight down to Tancredi's and I asked for her, and found her in. She was in the music-room and I went in and said, 'I am Judith Kendall, and I've come to ask about my sister.'"

"Good little Ju," said Patricia as she took breath. "I believe you could really have done it."

It was rather dim to read expressions, but she thought a strange look flitted across the eager face that was staring so hard at her. "You mustn't take it so seriously, Judy," she said, but Judith went on.

"'I've come to see if it's true that she'll never be a great singer and I know you'll tell me,' I said to Madame Tancredi, and she just put her arm about me and kissed me quite hard."

"That's what she would have done. How did you guess it?" cried Patricia.

"And she said very seriously, 'Your sister, my dear, is going to be the greatest singer I have ever taught, if she keeps on as she has begun, or if some stupid silly one doesn't take her from the only right method.'"

Patricia felt a surge of agonizing regret for all the bright hopes that she had lost forever, but she tried to laugh down into Judith's eager face.

"That sounds exactly like Tancredi," she declared. "How strange you should dream it so truly."

"It sounds true, doesn't it?" persisted Judith. "Should you be very cross with me if it weren't all a dream, Miss Pat?"

Patricia's heart stopped beating for a moment and then it leaped to her throat.

"What do you mean, Judith?" she called out, clutching her tightly by the shoulders. "What are you trying to tell me?"

"Ow! you hurt!" returned Judith, wriggling, and then she responded to the agony of appeal in Patricia's big gray eyes. "It isn't a dream. It's true," she said. "I went this afternoon."

Patricia could not take it in for a while. She had to question Judith again and again before she could accept this gift from the dark heavens.

"Are you sure?" she asked over and over until Judith became impatient.

"I may be only fourteen and a half and very small for my age," she said with withering dignity, "but I surely know what happened just this afternoon. I'm going back to bed now, and you can believe me or not just as you please," and in spite of Patricia's protest, she stalked away and slammed the door behind her—a very unusual thing for Judith.

Patricia sat by the window in a trance of delight. The future glowed with all its old alluring colors and new ones were shining out every time she looked ahead. She was to be a singer after all. What did anything else matter?

Suddenly she laughed aloud and jumping up she ran to the mirror and snapped on the light to make a radiant face at the girl in the frame.

"We'll try to put up with being a failure as a martyr, won't we, my dear?" she said breathlessly. "Oh, how hard we'll try not to grow too pleased with ourselves now! Just remind me about it when I'm getting top-lofty, will you, please? I'm afraid I'll forget to be meek."

"What's that you're talking about?" asked Constance's voice, and Patricia turned to see her standing smiling in the doorway.

"Oh, oh, you lovely thing!" she cried in instant approval. "Why, I'd never known you in that heavenly rig."

"Thanks for the tactful way you pay tribute to my frock," replied Constance smoothly. "It is rather nice, so I forgive you on the spot."

"Nice?" exclaimed Patricia with scorn for the word. "Nice! It's splendid, gorgeous, transcendent. Nice, indeed! Turn around and let me drink you in."

Constance turned. The dress was of dull gold-colored net with great flowers about its hem wrought into the net with gold thread and the bodice was one great gold flower with trailing net for sleeves. Gold bands held down Constance's dark hair, and the simplicity of the whole made it suitable.

"I think I shall stay here and look at myself," she said with quaint gravity. "It's been so long since I've had a real whole dress that I fear it has turned my head. I'll be asking everybody what they think of it if I go down."

Patricia pushed her out the door. "They'll tell you without asking," she promised. "I wonder what Rosamond will say when she sees you."

At that Constance came back into the room and closed the door.

"Rosamond won't be here, after all," she said with a little laugh. "She sent word to her father to do the polite thing to Madame Milano when she came to sing in Boston, and her father sent a special car down for Rosamond to take Milano up to the Hub. She's on her way now. That's going some, isn't it?"

She evidently wanted to break the news to Patricia before she learned from others, and she seemed surprised at Patricia's easy acceptance of it.

"You're getting to be a wise child," she said with an approving nod. "You know that it isn't always the highest flier that gets there the soonest. Keep smiling, my dear, and it won't hurt half so much."

Patricia did smile, not so much at the slang as at the friendly spirit which prompted it. "It doesn't hurt at all now," she answered, truthfully, and then she told Constance of Judith's visit.

Constance was delighted. "Plucky Judith!" she cried. "Lucky Miss Pat. You're about the happiest girl in the world just now, aren't you?"

"Just about," Patricia confessed.

"I'm not so wretched either," said Constance with a whirl of her golden draperies. "I've come out of the woods myself. Auntie is so pleased with my altar-piece that she's giving in at last. I'm to go home next week and I can go to night life or anything else I please. She considers me safe since I could paint that picture. Funny, isn't it, that she couldn't have known me for herself?"

Patricia congratulated her with great sincerity. "I'll miss you terribly, but I'm glad for your sake," she said warmly. "You really need someone to look after you."

Constance pretended to be indignant. "After all the mending I've done in your presence, too!" she cried reproachfully. "I'll not stay to be maligned like that."

She stopped at the door to add joyfully, "Do come down soon. I want you to meet Auntie," and she then turned again to go, but again halted.

"Hello, here's the Lodge beauty in all her loveliness," she said, welcoming Doris Leighton with a cordial handshake. "Come, Doris, let's grab the future prima donna and tote her to the ball-room. I don't believe she'll ever get there by herself."

Doris was lovely, even though her dress was not so radiant as Constance's nor so fresh as Patricia's, and her serene face shone at the news which Constance poured out to her on the way down. She could rejoice in other people's good fortune, Patricia saw and, remembering the Doris Leighton of the Academy days, marveled at her calm unselfishness.

"Do come over and say how-do-you-do to Elinor and Bruce," she begged, catching sight of them across the room. "I want you to meet Mr. Long who is with them, Doris."

Constance chuckled. "Talk about clothes bringing one into the limelight," she commented. "Here I am all done up beautifully and I'm passed over for a mere beauty. I won't come and meet your snippy Mr. Long, Miss Pat. I know him, anyway, and he engaged a couple of dances with me when I met him in the corridor going over to your room. I'll find Auntie, and wait for you, when you're through with your Longs and such."

It was delightful to find herself again in the bright world of her hopes again, and even the dullest place would have seemed radiant to Patricia that night, but the ball-room with its flowers and music, with its pretty girls and agreeable men, remained in her memory as a sort of Olympian festivity, part dream, part reality, long after she had forgotten the names of the men Bruce brought for her to dance with.

She had introduced Mr. Long to Doris and left her with him and Elinor as she went off to dance with Bruce. "I think he'll like her," she said, with a backward glance, and when Bruce demanded an explanation she told him all about it.

"Do you think it a good plan?" she asked rather anxiously. Bruce's good opinion meant much to her always.

"Fine," he replied with such heartiness that she feared he was joking. A glance at his serious face convinced her of her mistake.

"It'll be the very place for Doris," he said, "Mrs. Jonas will be quite devoted to her in her way, and Danny will love her at sight. Long, of course, will have to put up with her for the sake of the others," he added with a twinkle.

Patricia pretended not to understand, though Rosamond Merton's words about the "next girl" came back to her. "I'm not going to have Doris laughed about," she said warmly. "You know she's the dearest girl we know."

"Outside the family, I believe she does stand pretty high," admitted Bruce, with a smile down into his partner's eyes. "Small Sister Pat, may I tell you how glad I am?" he asked in a lower tone.

Patricia thought he meant about Tancredi's verdict, and she beamed on him. "It's too splendid, isn't it?" she exulted, and then he stared and had to be told.

He carried her back to Elinor and there he scolded her well for ever doubting that they would have allowed her to go on if there had not been definite promise in her.

"Tancredi told me herself when I went to see her about you that she would take no one, however recommended, unless they were going to make good," he said sternly. "You unbelieving little wretch, what right had you to make yourself miserable without telling us about it?"

Elinor drew her closer as she rose to meet Mr. Long, who had left Doris Leighton with Constance's aunt and was coming to claim her for the next dance.

"Never mind, Pat dear," she said with her brightest look of love. "It's all come out splendidly and you've learned how much you really care for it. That's something, you know."

Mr. Long nodded at Patricia as he addressed Elinor. "I am sorry to be late for my dance," he said, with significant emphasis; "but I was making plans with my new secretary and the time passed quickly."

Elinor did not understand that it was Doris he was speaking of and she smiled her acquiescence and went gracefully out on the floor.

Bruce sat down in her vacant chair next to Patricia. "And now your mind is at rest about your friend's future," he said with his nicest smile, "let's talk about your own."

Patricia laid an eager hand on his arm. "Oh, Bruce dear, we won't have time," she bubbled. "It's going to be so long till I have a future. I have to study for ages and ages, and, you know, something might, might happen to me. Don't let's plan too far ahead. I'm just looking forward to finishing up the spring here at Artemis Lodge, studying with Tancredi, and then I'll be ready to go out to dear old Greycroft with the rest of you to see the summer through. What's behind that I'd rather not think about just now. I'm so glad, glad, glad to come back to the dear hopes, after I thought I'd lost them!"

Bruce smiled again at her flushed face. "You've come back with something in your hands, Miss Pat," he said with kindly gravity. "I think I see unselfishness and courage in them now."

And as Patricia's eyes filled with grateful tears, he rose, holding out a hand to her.

"Come and see Constance's aunt," he invited. "We've no right to be gossipping here all night."

Patricia sprang up with her eyes alight. "It's all come out right after all," she whispered to herself. "Oh, how happy I am, and how hard I'll try to study. I won't mind waiting a long, long time for the future. I am so glad, glad, glad that it's there!"

As she followed Bruce across the room her face was glowing with rosy hope. She whispered to herself, "Some day I shall sing in the light, too. And tomorrow I shall sing the little song Milano sang, and Judy shall tell me that the ring has come back to it."