But he knew. He had seen her face grave and tender in the twilight, and
he knew.

She loved some man--some lucky devil! Ah, yes, that was it! And he knew
the love he had unwittingly spied upon to be august; the shamed
exultance of her face and her illumined eyes, the crimson banners her
cheeks had flaunted,--these were to Colonel Musgrave as a piece of
sacred pageantry; and before it his misery was awed, his envy went
posting to extinction.

Thus the stupid man reflected, and made himself very unhappy over it.

Then, after a little, the girl threw back her head and drew a deep
breath, and flashed a tremulous smile at him.

"Ah, yes," said she; "there are better things in life than coronets,
aren't there, Olaf?"

You should have seen how he caught up the word!

"Life!" he cried, with a bitter thrill of speech; "ah, what do I know of
life? I am only a recluse, a dreamer, a visionary! You must learn of
life from the men who have lived, Patricia. I haven't ever lived. I
have always chosen the coward's part. I have chosen to shut myself off
from the world, to posture in a village all my days, and to consider its
trifles as of supreme importance. I have affected to scorn that brave
world yonder where a man is proven. And, all the while, I was afraid of
it, I think. I was afraid of you before you came."

At the thought of this Rudolph Musgrave laughed as he fell to pacing up
and down before her.

"Life!" he cried, again, with a helpless gesture; and then smiled at
her, very sadly. "'Didn't I know there was something better in life than
grubbing after musty tribes and customs and folk-songs?'" he quoted.
"Why, what a question to ask of a professional genealogist! Don't you
realize, Patricia, that the very bread I eat is, actually, earned by the
achievements of people who have been dead for centuries? and in part, of
course, by tickling the vanity of living snobs? That constitutes a nice
trade for an able-bodied person as long as men are paid for emptying
garbage-barrels--now, doesn't it? And yet it is not altogether for the
pay's sake I do it," he added, haltingly. "There really is a fascination
about the work. You are really working out a puzzle,--like a fellow
solving a chess-problem. It isn't really work, it is amusement. And when
you are establishing a royal descent, and tracing back to czars and
Plantagenets and Merovingians, and making it all seem perfectly
plausible, the thing is sheer impudent, flagrant art