e flame of the gas-log, almost the only
modern innovation throughout the entire house, and was silent for a
moment; then he leaned his elbows on his knees and, still looking at the
flame, replied:

"I don't know about that. You have been a considerable help to _me_."

"To _you_!" exclaimed Turner, surprised. "A help to _you_? Why, how do
you mean?"

"Well," he answered, still without looking at her, "one always has one's
influence, you know."

"Ah, lots of influence _I_ have over anybody," retorted Turner,
incredulously.

"Yes, you have," he insisted. "You have plenty of influence over the
people that care for you. You have plenty of influence over me."

Turner, very much embarrassed, and not knowing how to answer, bent down
to the side of the mantelpiece and turned up the flame of the gas-log a
little. Young Haight continued, almost as embarrassed as she:

"I suppose I'm a bad lot, perhaps a little worse than most others, but I
think--I hope--there's some good in me. I know all this sounds absurd
and affected, but _really_ I'm not posing; you won't mind if I speak
just as I think, for this once. I promise," he went on with a half
smile, "not to do it again. You know my mother died when I was little
and I have lived mostly with men. You have been to me what the society
of women has been to other fellows. You see, you are the only girl I
ever knew very well--the only one I ever wanted to know. I have cared
for you the way other men have cared for the different women that come
into their lives; as they have cared for their mothers, their
sisters--and their wives. You have already influenced me as a mother or
sister should have done; what if I should ever ask you to be--to be the
_other_ to me, the one that's best of all?"

Young Haight turned toward her as he finished and looked at her for the
first time. Turner was still very much embarrassed.

"Oh, I'm very glad if I've been a help to--to anybody--to you," she
said, confusedly. "But I never knew that you cared--that you thought
about me--in that way. But you mustn't, you know, you mustn't care for
me in that way. I ought to tell you right away that I never could care
for you more than--I always have done; I mean care for you only as a
very, very good friend. You don't know, Dolly," she went on eagerly,
"how it hurts me to tell you so, because I care so much for you in every
other way that I wouldn't hurt your feelings for anything; but then you
know at the sa