h is the keenness of masculine penetration.
And now he felt almost relieved already. The natural craving for
sympathy of some kind or other was to satisfy itself through the medium
of pretty, much-tried Mollie.

"Yes," he answered, half desperately, half reluctantly. "Dolly is the
moon I am crying for,--or rather, as I might put it more poetically,
'the bright particular star.' What a good little thing you are to guess
at it so soon!"

"It did n't need much guessing at," she said, curving her innocent mouth
in a piteous effort to smile.

He, leaning against the round, padded back of his chair, sighed, and as
he sighed almost forgot the poor child altogether, even while she spoke
to him. Having all things else, he must still cry for this one other
gift, and really he felt very dolorous.

Mollie, pulling her screen to pieces, looked at him with a heavy yet
adoring heart. She was young enough to be greatly moved by his physical
beauty, and just now she could not turn away from him. His long-limbed,
slender figure (which, while still graceful and lithe enough, was _not_
a model of perfection, as she fondly imagined), his pale, dark face,
his dark eyes, even his rather impolite and uncomplimentary abstraction,
held fascination for her. Not having been greatly smiled upon by
fortune, she had fallen to longing eagerly and fearfully for this one
gift which had been so freely vouchsafed to Dolly, who had neither asked
nor cared for it. Surely there was some cross-grained fate at work.

She was very quiet indeed when he at length recollected himself and
roused from his reverie. He looked up to find her resting her warm,
rose-leaf colored cheek on her hand, and concentrating all her attention
upon the fire again. She was not inclined to talk when he spoke to her,
and indeed had so far shrunk within herself that he found it necessary
to exert his powers to their utmost before he could move her to anything
like interest in their usual topics of conversation. In fact, her
reserve entailed the necessity of a little hazardous warmth of manner
being exhibited on his part, and in the end a few more dangerous,
though half-jocular, speeches were made, and in spite of the temporary
dissatisfaction of his previous mood, he felt a trifle reluctant to
leave the fire and the sweet, unwise face when the time came to go.

"Good-night," he said to her, a few minutes before he went out. And
then, noticing for the twentieth time how becoming t