her dislike him as
you do, and as you always have, in your heart of hearts. George, I
understand you: thy people shall be my people and thy gods my gods.
George, won't you take me back?"

"Lucy, are you sure you understand me?" And in the darkness George's
bodily lips moved in unison with those which uttered the words in his
imaginary rendering of this scene. An eavesdropper, concealed behind
the column, could have heard the whispered word "sure," the emphasis put
upon it in the vision was so poignant. "You say you understand me, but
are you sure?"

Weeping, her head bowed almost to her waist, the ethereal Lucy made
reply: "Oh, so sure! I will never listen to father's opinions again. I
do not even care if I never see him again!"

"Then I pardon you," he said gently.

This softened mood lasted for several moments--until he realized that
it had been brought about by processes strikingly lacking in substance.
Abruptly he swung his feet down from the copestone to the floor of the
veranda. "Pardon nothing!" No meek Lucy had thrown herself in remorse
at his feet; and now he pictured her as she probably really was at
this moment: sitting on the white steps of her own front porch in the
moonlight, with red-headed Fred Kinney and silly Charlie Johnson and
four or five others--all of them laughing, most likely, and some idiot
playing the guitar!

George spoke aloud: "Riffraff!"

And because of an impish but all too natural reaction of the mind, he
could see Lucy with much greater distinctness in this vision than in his
former pleasing one. For a moment she was miraculously real before him,
every line and colour of her. He saw the moonlight shimmering in the
chiffon of her skirts brightest on her crossed knee and the tip of her
slipper; saw the blue curve of the characteristic shadow behind her,
as she leaned back against the white step; saw the watery twinkling of
sequins in the gauze wrap over her white shoulders as she moved, and
the faint, symmetrical lights in her black hair--and not one alluring,
exasperating twentieth-of-an-inch of her laughing profile was spared him
as she seemed to turn to the infernal Kinney--

"Riffraff!" And George began furiously to pace the stone floor.
"Riffraff!" By this hard term--a favourite with him since childhood's
scornful hour--he meant to indicate, not Lucy, but the young gentlemen
who, in his vision, surrounded her. "Riffraff!" he said again, aloud,
and again:

"Riffraff!"

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