day or two. Just
give him time. His mind doesn't work very quickly, not as quickly as a
woman's. Come," she said. "When we have a breathing space you can tell
me all about it. But in the meantime I'm pretty sure I understand."

"How can you?" he asked wearily. "You have other traditions."

"I don't know about traditions; but I don't give my love and take it
away again. I set rather too much value on it. I understand because I
love you."

"Others with the same traditions can't understand."

"I'm not proposing to marry you," she said bluntly. "That makes a
difference."

"It does," said he, meeting her eyes unflinchingly.

"If you weren't a brave man, I shouldn't say such a thing to you.
Anyhow I understand you're the last man in the world who should take me
for a fool."

"My God!" said Paul in a choky voice. "What can I do to thank you?"

"Win the election."

"You are still my dearest lady--my very very dearest lady," said he.

Her shrewd eyes fell upon the cornelian heart. She picked it tip and
held it out to him on her plump palm.

"Why have you taken this off your watch-chain?"

"It's a little false god," said he.

"It's the first thing yon asked for when you recovered from your
illness. You said you had kept it since you were a tiny boy. See? I
remember. You set great value on it then?"

"I believed in it," said Paul.

"And now you don't? But a woman gave it to you."

"Yes," said Paul, wondering, in his masculine way, how the deuce she
knew that. "I was a brat of eleven."

"Then keep it. Put it on your chain again. I'm sure it's a true little
god. Take it back to please me."

As there was nothing, from lapping up Eisel to killing a crocodile,
that Paul would not have done, in the fulness of his wondering
gratitude, for his dearest lady, he meekly attached the heart to his
chain and put it in his pocket.

"I must tell you," said he, "that the lady--she seemed a goddess to me
then--chose me as her champion in a race, a race of urchins at a Sunday
school treat, and I didn't win. But she gave me the cornelian heart as
a prize."

"But as my champion you will win," said Miss Winwood. "My dear boy,"
she said, and her eyes grew very tender as she laid her hand on the
young man's arm, "believe what an old woman is telling you is true.
Don't throw away any little shred of beauty you've ever had in your
life. The beautiful things are really the true ones, though they may
seem to be illusions. Without