paw. Simeon chattered delightedly and
sprang into Dory's lap to nestle comfortably there.

"I always thought you would fall in love with Estelle, some day,"
Adelaide was saying.

Dory looked at Simeon with an ironical smile. "Why does she say those
things to me?" he asked. Simeon looked at Adelaide with a puzzled frown
that said, "Why, indeed?"

"You and Estelle are exactly suited to each other," explained she.

"Exactly unsuited," replied he. "I have nothing that she needs; she has
nothing that I need. And love is an exchange of needs. Now, I have hurt
your vanity."

"Why do you say that?" demanded Adelaide.

"You'd like to feel that your lover came to you empty-handed, asking
everything, humbly protesting that he had nothing to give. And you know
that I--" He smiled soberly. "Sometimes I think you have really nothing I
need or want, that I care for you because you so much need what I can
give. You poor pauper, with the delusion that you are rich!"

"You are frank," said she, smiling, but not liking it.

"And why shouldn't I be? I've given up hope of your ever seeing the
situation as it is. I've nothing to lose with you. Besides, I shouldn't
want you on any false terms. One has only to glance about him to shrink
from the horrors of marriage based on delusions and lies. So, I can
afford to be frank."

She gave him a puzzled look. She had known him all her life; they had
played together almost every day until she was seventeen and went East,
to school, with Janet Whitney. It was while she was at home on her first
long vacation that she had flirted with him, had trapped him into an
avowal of love; and then, having made sure of the truth which her vanity
of conquest and the fascination of his free and frank manliness for her,
though she denied it to herself, had led her on to discover beyond doubt,
she became conscience-stricken. And she confessed to him that she loved
Ross Whitney and was engaged to him; and he had taken the disclosure so
calmly that she almost thought he, like herself, had been simply
flirting. And yet--She dimly understood his creed of making the best of
the inevitable, and of the ridiculousness of taking oneself too
seriously. "He probably has his own peculiar way of caring for a woman,"
she was now reflecting, "just as he has his own peculiar way in every
other respect."

Arthur came, and their mother; and not until long after supper, when her
father had been got to bed, did she have the