ng me to come to Elkington. I shall not enter into the details of
the legal matter involved. Many times that winter I was a guest at the
yellow-brick house, and I have to confess, as spring came on, that
I made several trips to Elkington which business necessity did not
absolutely demand.

I considered Maude Hutchins, and found the consideration rather a
delightful process. As became an eligible and successful young man, I
was careful not to betray too much interest; and I occupied myself at
first with a review of what I deemed her shortcomings. Not that I was
thinking of marriage--but I had imagined the future Mrs. Paret as tall;
Maude was up to my chin: again, the hair of the fortunate lady was to
be dark, and Maude's was golden red: my ideal had esprit, lightness
of touch, the faculty of seizing just the aspect of a subject that
delighted me, and a knowledge of the world; Maude was simple, direct,
and in a word provincial. Her provinciality, however, was negative
rather than positive, she had no disagreeable mannerisms, her voice was
not nasal; her plasticity appealed to me. I suppose I was lost without
knowing it when I began to think of moulding her.

All of this went on at frequent intervals during the winter, and while
I was organizing the Elkington Power and Traction Company for George I
found time to dine and sup at Maude's house, and to take walks with
her. I thought I detected an incense deliciously sweet; by no means
overpowering, like the lily's, but more like the shy fragrance of the
wood flower. I recall her kind welcomes, the faint deepening of colour
in her cheeks when she greeted me, and while I suspected that she looked
up to me she had a surprising and tantalizing self-command.

There came moments when I grew slightly alarmed, as, for instance, one
Sunday in the early spring when I was dining at the Ezra Hutchins's
house and surprised Mrs. Hutchins's glance on me, suspecting her of
seeking to divine what manner of man I was. I became self-conscious; I
dared not look at Maude, who sat across the table; thereafter I began to
feel that the Hutchins connection regarded me as a suitor. I had
grown intimate with George and his wife, who did not refrain from sly
allusions; and George himself once remarked, with characteristic tact,
that I was most conscientious in my attention to the traction affair; I
have reason to believe they were even less delicate with Maude. This was
the logical time to withdraw--b