fraid to be sensible just because most
people look on common sense as insanity. A hundred things that used to be
luxuries for the king alone are now so cheap that the day-laborer has
them--all in less than two lifetimes of real science! To-morrow or next
day some one will discover, say, the secret of easily and cheaply
interchanging the so-called elements. Bang! the whole structure of
swagger and envy will collapse!"

They all laughed, and Del went into the house. "Estelle--no woman, no
matter who--could hope to get a better husband than Lorry," she was
thinking. "And, now that he's superintendent, there's no reason why they
shouldn't marry. What a fine thing, what an American thing, that a man
with no chance at all in the start should be able to develop himself so
that a girl like Estelle could--yes, and should--be proud of his love and
proud to love him." She recalled how Lorry at the high school was about
the most amusing of the boys, with the best natural manner, and far and
away the best dancer; how he used to be invited everywhere, until
excitement about fashion and "family" reached Saint X; how he was then
gradually dropped until he, realizing what was the matter, haughtily
"cut" all his former friends and associates. "We've certainly been racing
downhill these last few years. Where the Wilmots used to be about the
only silly people in town, there are scores of families now with noses in
the air and eyes looking eagerly about for chances to snub. But, on the
other hand, there's the university, and Arthur--and Dory." She dismissed
Lorry and Estelle and Saint X's fashionable strivings and, in the
library, sat down to compose a letter to Dory--no easy task in those
days, when there were seething in her mind and heart so much that she
longed to tell him but ought not, so much that she ought to tell but
could not.

Lorry had acted as if he were about to depart, while Adelaide was there;
he resumed his seat on the steps at Estelle's feet as soon as she
disappeared. "I suppose I ought to go," said he, with a humorous glance
up at her face with its regular features and steadfast eyes.

She ran her slim fingers through his hair, let the tips of them linger an
instant on his lips before she took her hand away.

"I couldn't let you go just yet," said she slowly, absently. "This is the
climax of the day. In this great, silent, dim light all my dreams--all
our dreams--seem to become realities and to be trooping down from t