icular." He
looked at the girl with a sort of urgency which she scarcely
comprehended. "Miss Sessions," he said, "I wear my hair longer than most
men, and the barber is always deeply grieved at my obstinacy. I never
eat potatoes, and many well-meaning persons are greatly concerned over
it--they regard the exclusion of potatoes from one's dietary as almost
criminal. But you--I expect in you more tolerance concerning my
peculiarities. Why must you care at all what I think, or what my views
are in this matter?"

"Oh, I don't understand you at all," Lydia said distressfully.

"No?" agreed Stoddard with an interrogative note in his voice. "But
after all there's no need for people to be so determined to understand
each other, is there?"

Lydia looked at him with swimming eyes.

"Why didn't you tell me not to do those things?" she managed finally to
say with some composure.

"Tell you not to do things that you had thought out for yourself and
decided on?" asked Stoddard. "Oh, no, Miss Sessions. What of your own
development? I had no business to interfere like that. You might be
exactly right about it, and I wrong, so far as you yourself were
concerned. And even if I were right and you wrong, the only chance of
growth for you was to exploit the matter and find it out for yourself."

"I don't understand a word you say," Lydia Sessions repeated dully.
"That's the kind of thing you used always to talk when you and I were
planning for John Consadine. Development isn't what a woman wants. She
wants--she needs--to understand how to please those she--approves. If
she fails anywhere, and those she--well, if somebody that she
has--confidence--in tells her, why then she'll know better next time.
You should have told me."

Her eyes overflowed as she made an end, but Stoddard adopted a tone of
determined lightness.

"Dear me," he said gently. "What reactionary views! You're out of temper
with me this evening--I get on your nerves with my theorizing. Forgive
me, and forget all about it."

Lydia Sessions smiled kindly on her guest, without speaking. But one
thing remained to her out of it all. Gray Stoddard thought ill of her
work--it carried her further from him, instead of nearer! So many months
of effort worse than wasted! At that instant she had sight of Shade
Buckheath's dark face in the entry. She got to her feet.

"I beg your pardon," she said wanly, "I think there is some one out
there that I ought to speak to."

C