help
the cause along."

He did what he could, and what he could was much. The solid men, when he
brought the subject to their attention, felt that this was an extension
of that work of Duncan's for the betterment of the town, which they so
heartily approved. They subscribed freely to the expense, and better
still, they lent personal countenance to the entertainments.

Guilford Duncan also attended one of the entertainments, though it had
been his fixed purpose not to do so. The reason was that Guilford Duncan
was altogether human and a full-blooded young man. From the time of his
arrival at Cairo until now, he had not had any association with women.
When such association came to him he accepted it as a boon, without
relaxing, in any degree, his devotion to affairs.

It was the old story, related in a thousand forms, but always with the
same purport, since ever the foundations of the world were laid.

"Male and female created he them." "And God saw that it was good."

All of human history is comprehended in those two sentences quoted from
the earliest history of mankind.

XII

BARBARA VERNE

The person who had originated and who conducted Mrs. Deming's boarding
house--famous for its fare--was, in fact, not Mrs. Deming at all. That
good lady would pretty certainly have scored a failure if she had tried
actively to manage such an establishment. She had never in her life
known necessity for work of any kind, or acquired the least skill in its
doing. She had been bred in luxury and had never known any other way of
living until a few months before Guilford Duncan went to take his meals
at what was known as her "table."

She had lived in a spacious and sumptuously furnished suburban house
near an eastern city, until two years or so before the time of this
story.

When Barbara Verne, her only sister's child, was born and orphaned
within a single day, and under peculiarly saddening circumstances, the
aunt had adopted her quite as a matter of course.

No sooner had Barbara ceased to be an infant in arms than she began to
manifest strong and peculiar traits of character. Even as a little child
she was wondered at as "so queer--so old fashioned, don't you know?"

She had a healthy child's love for her dolls, and though the persons
around her had not enough clearness of vision to see that she was
fruitfully and creatively imaginative in her peculiar way, her dolls'
nursery was full of wonderful stories, known