a puzzled
frown and a moment of hard thinking--and then with a murmured excuse she
rose and went away quickly into the house. In the meantime I had
followed her look. Sitting close by the lamp, in the room inside, Dillon
was staring straight at this spot where I was invisible in the dark. And
he looked old--and rigid, as though he'd been staring like that for some
time. I caught just a glimpse. Then he heard her step and turned hastily
back to his work. I looked at my watch. It was after twelve.

"And he never knew it was all about him," I said to myself disgustedly.
"I hope this doesn't spoil it all."

* * * * *

But that is precisely what it did. The next morning she was coolly
polite and Dillon determinedly genial. I could feel a silent struggle
between them as to what should be done with me. She wanted to get rid of
me, he wanted to keep us together. Gone was all his quiet strength, in
its place was an anxious friendliness. He made me tell him what I was
writing. He said he was glad that his press agent daughter had taken me
'round and opened my eyes. And as soon as she got through with me he
himself would do all he could.

"I'm through with him," said Eleanore cheerfully. "I've shown him all I
possibly can. What you need now," she added, turning to me in her old
easy manner, "is to watch the harbor all by yourself and get your own
feelings about it. You might begin at the North River docks."

I spent a wretched afternoon. All my plans for my work and my life
assumed the most gray and desolate hues. Eleanore was taking a nap. At
last she came down and gave me some tea.

"May I come out and see you now and then?" I asked her very humbly. "It
would help me so much to talk over my work."

"No," she answered kindly, "I think you'd better not."

"Why not?" I blurted. "What have I done?"

She hesitated, then looked at me squarely.

"You've made my absurd young father," she said, "think that he is no
longer young."

I lost just a moment in admiration. There wasn't one girl in a hundred
who would have come out with it like that. Then I seized my chance.

"Why, it's perfectly idiotic," I cried. "Here's a man so big he's a
giant beside me, so full of some queer magnetic force that on the way up
here in the boat he made me forget that I was there. I forgot that _you_
were there," I threw in, and I caught just the sign of a gleam in her
eyes. "No longer young?" I continued. "That man