hin ones, aware that hers was quite a homely
hand, her poorest "point." She knew somehow that he wanted to kiss her,
and she wondered what she should do if he tried,--whether she should be
offended or let him "just once." He was a handsome, bashful boy, and she
felt fond of him.

But when he had got his courage to the point, she drew off quickly, and
to distract his attention exclaimed,--"See! What's that?" They looked
across the broad surface of the lake and saw a tiny rim of pure gold
swell upwards from the waves.

"It's just the moon!"

"How beautiful it is," Milly sighed.

Again when his arm came stealing about her she moved away murmuring,
"No, no." And so they went back, awkwardly silent, to the others, who
were telling stories about a blazing camp-fire they had thought it
proper to build.... After that Harold came to see her quite regularly,
and at last declared his love in a stumbling, boyish fashion. But Milly
dismissed him--he was only a clerk at Hoppers'--without hesitation. "We
are both too young, dear," she said. He had tried to kiss her hand, and
somehow he managed so awkwardly that their heads bumped. Then he had
gone away to Colorado to recover. For some months they exchanged boy and
girl letters, which she kept for years tied up with ribbon. After a time
he ceased to write, and she thought nothing of it, as her busy little
world was peopled with new figures. Then there came wedding cards from
Denver and at first she could not remember who this Harold Stevens about
to marry Miss Glazier, could be. Her first affair, a pallid little
romance that had not given her any real excitement!

Afterwards in moods of retrospection Milly would say: "However I didn't
get into trouble as a girl, with no mother, and such an easy,
unsuspecting father, I don't know. Think of it, my dear, out almost
every night, dances, rides, picnics, theatres. Perhaps the men were
better those days or the girls more innocent."

There was one episode, however, of these earlier years that left a
deeper mark.

VI

MILLY LEARNS

The friend who at the opportune moment had offered Horatio his point of
stability at Hoppers' was Henry Snowden,--a handsome, talkative man of
forty-five. He was manager of a department in the mail-order house, with
the ambition of becoming one of the numerous firm. It was he who had put
Horatio in the hands of the real estate firm that had resulted in the
West Laurence Avenue House. Snowden, with