tantly. "I thought I was in love with this girl, you
see," he went on, "till I saw Miss Tepping."

"That makes a difference," I admitted.

"And I couldn't bear to break her heart."

"Heaven forbid!" I cried. "It is the one unpardonable sin. Better
anything than that." Then I grew practical. "Father's consent?"

"MY father's? IS it likely? He expects me to marry into some
distinguished English family."

I hummed a moment. "Well, out with it!" I exclaimed, pointing my cigar
at him.

He leaned back in his chair and told me the whole story. A pretty girl;
golden hair; introduced to her by a friend; nice, simple little thing;
mind and heart above the irregular stage on to which she had been driven
by poverty alone; father dead; mother in reduced circumstances. "To keep
the home together, poor Sissie decided--"

"Precisely so," I murmured, knocking off my ash. "The usual
self-sacrifice! Case quite normal! Everything en regle!"

"You don't mean to say you doubt it?" he cried, flushing up, and
evidently regarding me as a hopeless cynic. "I do assure you, Dr.
Cumberledge, the poor child--though miles, of course, below Miss
Tepping's level--is as innocent, and as good--"

"As a flower in May. Oh, yes; I don't doubt it. How did you come to
propose to her, though?"

He reddened a little. "Well, it was almost accidental," he said,
sheepishly. "I called there one evening, and her mother had a headache
and went up to bed. And when we two were left alone, Sissie talked a
great deal about her future and how hard her life was. And after a while
she broke down and began to cry. And then--"

I cut him short with a wave of my hand. "You need say no more," I put
in, with a sympathetic face. "We have all been there."

We paused a moment, while I puffed smoke at the photograph again.
"Well," I said at last, "her face looks to me really simple and nice. It
is a good face. Do you see her often?"

"Oh, no; she's on tour."

"In the provinces?"

"M'yes; just at present, at Scarborough."

"But she writes to you?"

"Every day."

"Would you think it an unpardonable impertinence if I made bold to
ask whether it would be possible for you to show me a specimen of her
letters?"

He unlocked a drawer and took out three or four. Then he read one
through, carefully. "I don't think," he said, in a deliberative voice,
"it would be a serious breach of confidence in me to let you look
through this one. There's really nothing in it, you