groups, each with its own hero. "They seem so eager and so confident,
all these boys--it's touching. But of course youth doesn't know it's
touching."

Amberson coughed. "No, it doesn't seem to take itself as pathetic,
precisely! Eugene and I were just speaking of something like that.
Do you know what I think whenever I see these smooth, triumphal young
faces? I always think: 'Oh, how you're going to catch it'!"

"George!"

"Oh, yes," he said. "Life's most ingenious: it's got a special walloping
for every mother's son of 'em!"

"Maybe," said Isabel, troubled--"maybe some of the mothers can take the
walloping for them."

"Not one!" her brother assured her, with emphasis. "Not any more than
she can take on her own face the lines that are bound to come on her
son's. I suppose you know that all these young faces have got to get
lines on 'em?"

"Maybe they won't," she said, smiling wistfully. "Maybe times will
change, and nobody will have to wear lines."

"Times have changed like that for only one person that I know," Eugene
said. And as Isabel looked inquiring, he laughed, and she saw that she
was the "only one person." His implication was justified, moreover, and
she knew it. She blushed charmingly.

"Which is it puts the lines on the faces?" Amberson asked. "Is it age
or trouble? Of course we can't decide that wisdom does it--we must be
polite to Isabel."

"I'll tell you what puts the lines there," Eugene said. "Age puts some,
and trouble puts some, and work puts some, but the deepest are carved by
lack of faith. The serenest brow is the one that believes the most."

"In what?" Isabel asked gently.

"In everything!"

She looked at him inquiringly, and he laughed as he had a moment before,
when she looked at him that way. "Oh, yes, you do!" he said.

She continued to look at him inquiringly a moment or two longer, and
there was an unconscious earnestness in her glance, something trustful
as well as inquiring, as if she knew that whatever he meant it was all
right. Then her eyes drooped thoughtfully, and she seemed to address
some inquiries to herself. She looked up suddenly. "Why, I believe," she
said, in a tone of surprise, "I believe I do!"

And at that both men laughed. "Isabel!" her brother exclaimed. "You're
a foolish person! There are times when you look exactly fourteen years
old!"

But this reminded her of her real affair in that part of the world.
"Good gracious!" she said. "Where have the child