ying you
a little."

"Me?--an old man with only the remembrance of happiness?"

"You, who have had happiness granted to you. That isn't what made me
cry, though. I cried because I was glad. You and I, with all this great
span of years between us, and yet--so wonderfully alike! I had always
thought of myself as a creature utterly apart."

"Ah, that is how all young people think of themselves. It wears off.
Tell me about this wonderful resemblance of ours."

He sat attentive while she described her heart to him. But when, at the
close of her confidences, she said, "So you see it's a case of sheer
heredity, grand-papa," the word "Fiddlesticks!" would out.

"Forgive me, my dear," he said, patting her hand. "I was very much
interested. But I do believe young people are even more staggered by
themselves than they were in my day. And then, all these grand theories
they fall back on! Heredity... as if there were something to baffle us
in the fact of a young woman liking to be admired! And as if it were
passing strange of her to reserve her heart for a man she can respect
and look up to! And as if a man's indifference to her were not of all
things the likeliest to give her a sense of inferiority to him! You and
I, my dear, may in some respects be very queer people, but in the matter
of the affections we are ordinary enough."

"Oh grand-papa, do you really mean that?" she cried eagerly.

"At my age, a man husbands his resources. He says nothing that he does
not really mean. The indifference between you and other young women
is that which lay also between me and other young men: a special
attractiveness... Thousands of slippers, did I say? Tens of thousands. I
had hoarded them with a fatuous pride. On the evening of my betrothal I
made a bonfire of them, visible from three counties. I danced round it
all night." And from his old eyes darted even now the reflections of
those flames.

"Glorious!" whispered Zuleika. "But ah," she said, rising to her feet,
"tell me no more of it--poor me! You see, it isn't a mere special
attractiveness that _I_ have. _I_ am irresistible."

"A daring statement, my child--very hard to prove."

"Hasn't it been proved up to the hilt to-day?"

"To-day?... Ah, and so they did really all drown themselves for you?...
Dear, dear!... The Duke--he, too?"

"He set the example."

"No! You don't say so! He was a greatly-gifted young man--a true
ornament to the College. But he always seemed to me rat