t your feet? What a wonderful thing it is to be
born into this world with a great talent and how it must make you look
down on us poor mortals who have to grind and grind for just a bare
existence. I'll be proud some day to say that I have had the honor of
knowing you. You won't forget we were acquaintances, will you, Esther?"
the young man concluded, it was hard to tell whether in bitterness or
joking.

And his companion turned her face away, pretending to glance out of the
car window at the uninteresting stretch of country and the rapidly
disappearing telegraph poles.

"I shall never forget that I was a girl being raised in an orphan asylum
and that your mother took me to her home and did what she could to give
me my first start in learning to sing, if that is what you mean, Dr.
Ashton," Esther continued. "Neither can I forget what you have always
done for Betty, though I feel of course that Betty will more than repay
all the people who love her. But if you mean that you only wish us to be
acquaintances in the future, why--" But in spite of her strong effort at
self-control Esther's lips were trembling and the tears gathering in her
eyes.

Nevertheless she made no effort at withdrawal when Dick Ashton for an
instant placed his hands over her own tightly clasped ones.

"You are not playing fair, Esther," he urged, "for you know in your
heart that I meant no such thing."

Then both the girl and the man were silent with the vision of their
possible futures before them. If only Dick Ashton could have asked
Esther to give up the career ahead of her, to renounce her music, to
come back home with him to the United States to be his wife. But what
had he to offer in exchange for these great sacrifices? He was a
penniless young doctor without more than a hundred dollars in the world
once he had paid his passage home and set up some kind of office.
Moreover, suppose he should win patients and success sooner than other
men? Did he not owe his first earnings to his mother and to his sister,
Betty, whose courage and resourcefulness had helped him prepare for his
career? Besides, what did Esther not also feel that she owed to this
same sister? Plainly she had let him know her views on that afternoon
some time ago when he had tried dissuading her from making her _debut_
if the thought of a professional life made her unhappy. Esther had then
said that she felt that she must work until she was able to take care of
herself and Bet