est ideals."

Jeff laughed. It was a kindly laugh. Anne was again sure he loved Miss
Amabel.

"I can't see Moore changing much after twenty-five," he said to Choate,
who confirmed him briefly:

"Same old Weedie."

"Mr. Moore is not popular," said Miss Amabel, with dignity, turning now
to Farvie. "He never has been, here in Addington. He comes of plain
people."

"That's not it, Miss Amabel," said Choate gently. "He might have been
spawned out of the back meadows or he might have been--a Bracebridge."
He bowed to her with a charming conciliation and Miss Amabel sat a
little straighter. "If we don't accept him, it's because he's Weedon
Moore."

"We were in school with him, you know: in college, too," said Jeff, with
that gentleness men always accorded her, men of perception who saw in
her the motherhood destined to diffuse itself, often to no end: she was
so noble and at the same time so helpless in the crystal prison of her
hopes. "We knew Weedie like a book."

Miss Amabel took on an added dignity, proportioned to the discomfort of
her task. Here she was defending Weedon Moore whom her outer
sensibilities rejected the while his labelled virtues moved her soul.
Sometimes when she found herself with people like these to-night,
manifestly her own kind, she was tired of being good.

"I don't know any one," said she, "who feels the prevailing unrest more
keenly than Weedon Moore."

At that instant, Mary Nellen, her eyes brightening as these social
activities increased, appeared in the doorway, announcing doubtfully:

"Mr. Moore."

Jeffrey, as if actually startled, looked round at Choate who was
unaffectedly annoyed. Anne, rising to receive the problematic Moore,
thought they had an air of wondering how they could repel unwarranted
invasion. Miss Amabel, in a sort of protesting, delicate distress, was
loyally striving to make the invader's path plain.

"I told him I was coming," she said. "It seems he had thought of
dropping in." Then Anne went out on the heels of Mary Nellen, hearing
Miss Amabel conclude, as she left, with an apologetic note unfamiliar to
her soft voice, "He wants you to write something, Jeff, for the
_Argosy_."

Anne, even before seeing him, became conscious that Mary Nellen regarded
the newcomer as undesirable; and when she came on him standing, hat in
hand, she agreed that Weedon Moore was, in his outward integument,
exceedingly unpleasant: a short, swarthy, tubby man, always, she was to