sophy of
procrastination (but another form of selfishness) was the spawn of
a supposition; the supposition that his love for Sue Desha was not
returned; that it was hopeless, absurd. He was not injuring her. He was
the moth, she the flame. He did not realize that the moth can extinguish
the candle.

He had learned some of life's lessons, though the most difficult had
been forgotten, but he had yet to understand the mighty force of love;
that it contains no stagnant quality. Love, reciprocal love, uplifts.
But there must be that reciprocal condition to cling to. For love is
not selfishness on a grand scale, but a glorified pride. And the fine
differentiation between these two words is the line separating the love
that fouls from the love that cleanses.

And even as Garrison was fighting out the night with his sleepless
thoughts, Sue Desha was in the same restless condition. Mr. Waterbury
had arrived. His generous snores could be heard stalking down the
corridor from the guest-chamber. He was of the abdominal variety of the
animal species, eating and sleeping his way through life, oblivious of
all obstacles.

Waterbury's ancestry was open to doubt. It was very vague; as vague as
his features. It could not be said that he was brought up by his hair
because he hadn't any to speak of. But the golden flood of money he
commanded could not wash out certain gutter marks in his speech, person,
and manner. That such an inmate should eat above the salt in Colonel
Desha's home was a painful acknowledgment of the weight of necessity.

What the necessity was, Sue sensed but vaguely. It was there,
nevertheless, almost amounting to an obsession. For when the Desha and
Waterbury type commingle there is but the one interpretation. Need
of money or clemency in the one case; need of social introduction or
elevation through kinship in the other.

The latter was Waterbury's case. But he also loved Sue--in his own way.
He had met her first at the Carter Handicap, and, as he confided
to himself: "She was a spanking filly, of good stock, and with good
straight legs."

His sincere desire to "butt into the Desha family" he kept for the
moment to himself. But as a preliminary maneuver he had intimated that
a visit to the Desha home would not come in amiss. And the old colonel,
for reasons he knew and Waterbury knew, thought it would be wisest to
accede.

Perhaps now the colonel was considering those reasons. His room was next
that of his