r and for the moment crushed the life back.

CHAPTER IX.

Mr. Neckart, standing back in the shadow of the scrubby althea-bushes,
his hands clasped behind him and his eyes following the skiff as it
drifted down the river in the twilight, compelled himself to argue the
matter out according to the rulings of common sense, just as he would
the appropriation bill.

He had been coming too close of late to this little girl in a brotherly
way--of course in a brotherly way. He must stand farther off. She must
marry. He had always looked forward to her marrying, and the time, in
all probability, had come now. Van Ness was a manly, strong fellow: her
father would urge it, and Jane would soon be won. For Neckart, with the
majority of men, regarded amiability and high-colored, beefy good looks
in his own sex as the irresistible attractions in a woman's eyes.

"They both have youth and personal attractions and culture--everything
to make a marriage suitable. I can find no objection to it," proceeded
his most reasonable meditation.

"But I can never see it!"

He had not spoken, but it seemed to him as if he had cried out. Then he
laughed to think what an egregious ass he was. What was this
yellow-haired girl in the boat to him more than any other of the
millions of women with whom the world was filled? Nothing. They all were
nothing to him.

He turned his back on the river and struck into one of the dusky alleys
of the garden, pacing up and down below the old plum trees. He whistled
to himself, and ran his hand through his shaggy hair as if to be rid of
some cobwebs in his brain. As he brushed against the branches a bird
fluttered out of its nest and chirped angrily. Why, women and their love
and their homes could no more come into his life than that silly robin
or her brood! Two years ago this inexorable necessity did not even give
him a moment's chagrin. The newspaper, his army of followers, the policy
of the country,--these made life big and full enough. If he wanted
little selfish pleasures, there was his arm-chair and open fire, his
shelf of old books, or a dinner at Delmonico's with some clever fellow,
or a dash to Europe, or across the continent, to pry into the background
against which other clever fellows, whether white or yellow or black,
lived and worked. He would go back to the office to-night; he could hear
the engine puffing at the station now, making ready for the next train;
he could finish the evening with h