nce."

She opened the door, and as she went in he heard her say: "No, Sophy,
don't go! I want you both."

The rest of Darrow's day was a succession of empty and agitating
scenes. On his way down to Givre, before he had seen Effie Leath, he
had pictured somewhat sentimentally the joy of the moment when he should
take her in his arms and receive her first filial kiss. Everything
in him that egotistically craved for rest, stability, a comfortably
organized middle-age, all the home-building instincts of the man who
has sufficiently wooed and wandered, combined to throw a charm about the
figure of the child who might--who should--have been his. Effie came to
him trailing the cloud of glory of his first romance, giving him
back the magic hour he had missed and mourned. And how different the
realization of his dream had been! The child's radiant welcome, her
unquestioning acceptance of, this new figure in the family group, had
been all that he had hoped and fancied. If Mother was so awfully happy
about it, and Owen and Granny, too, how nice and cosy and comfortable
it was going to be for all of them, her beaming look seemed to say; and
then, suddenly, the small pink fingers he had been kissing were laid
on the one flaw in the circle, on the one point which must be settled
before Effie could, with complete unqualified assurance, admit the
new-comer to full equality with the other gods of her Olympus.

"And is Sophy awfully happy about it too?" she had asked, loosening her
hold on Darrow's neck to tilt back her head and include her mother in
her questioning look.

"Why, dearest, didn't you see she was?" Anna had exclaimed, leaning to
the group with radiant eyes.

"I think I should like to ask her," the child rejoined, after a minute's
shy consideration; and as Darrow set her down her mother laughed: "Do,
darling, do! Run off at once, and tell her we expect her to be awfully
happy too."

The scene had been succeeded by others less poignant but almost as
trying. Darrow cursed his luck in having, at such a moment, to run
the gauntlet of a houseful of interested observers. The state of being
"engaged", in itself an absurd enough predicament, even to a man only
intermittently exposed, became intolerable under the continuous scrutiny
of a small circle quivering with participation. Darrow was furthermore
aware that, though the case of the other couple ought to have made
his own less conspicuous, it was rather they who found a