t was, the improvement in her appearance only served to
intensify his agitation. He now saw in her not only all that had first
conquered him, but also those unsuspected beauties and graces--and
possibilities of beauty and grace yet more entrancing, were she but
dressed properly.

"You don't begin to appreciate how beautiful you are," said he. It had
ever been one of his rules in dealing with women to feed their physical
vanity sparingly and cautiously, lest it should blaze up into one of
those consuming flames that produce a very frenzy of conceit. But this
rule, like all the others, had gone by the board. He could not conceal
his infatuation from her, not even when he saw that it was turning her
head and making his task harder and harder. "If you would only go over
to New York to several dressmakers whose names I'll give you, I know
you'd get clothes from them that you could touch up into something
uncommon."

"I can't afford it," said she. "What I have is good enough--and costs
more than I've the right to pay." And her tone silenced him; it was the
tone of finality, and he had discovered that she had a will.

* * * * *

Never before had Frederick Norman let any important thing drift. And
when he started in with Dorothy he had no idea of changing that fixed
policy. He would have scoffed if anyone had foretold to him that he
would permit the days and the weeks to go by with nothing definite
accomplished toward any definite purpose. Yet that was what occurred.
Every time he came he had in mind a fixed resolve to make distinct
progress with the girl. Every time he left he had a furious quarrel with
himself for his weakness. "She is making a fool of me," he said to
himself. "She _must_ be laughing at me." But he returned only to repeat
his folly, to add one more to the lengthening, mocking series of lost
opportunities.

The truth lay deeper than he saw. He recognized only his own weakness of
the infatuated lover's fatuous timidity. He did not realize how potent
her charm for him was, how completely content she made him when he was
with her, just from the fact that they were together. After a time an
unsatisfied passion often thus diffuses itself, ceases to be a narrow
torrent, becomes a broad river whose resistless force is hidden beneath
an appearance of sparkling calm. Her ingenuousness amused him; her
developing taste and imagination interested him; her freshness, her
freedom from an