all your life."

"How do you know that?" His gaze was quizzical and mocking.

"I don't know. But you haven't."

"Well," he said, "we'll say I haven't. But I wasn't happy where I came
from and I came here looking for happiness--and something else. That I
didn't find what I was looking for isn't the question--mostly none of us
find the things we're looking for. But if I had been happy where I was I
wouldn't have come here. You say your father has been happy there; that
he's got plenty of money and all that. Then why should he want to live
here?"

"I believe I told you that he is coming here for his health."

His eyes lighted savagely. But Sheila did not catch their expression for
at that moment she was looking at his shadow on the floor. How long, how
grotesque, it seemed, and forbidding--like its owner.

"So he's got everything he wants but his health. What made him lose
that?"

"How should I know?"

"Just lost it, I reckon," said Dakota subtly. "Cares and Worry?"

"I presume. His health has been failing for about ten years."

Sheila was looking straight at Dakota now and she saw his face whiten, his
lips harden. And when he spoke again there was a chill in his voice and a
distinct pause between his words.

"Ten years," he said. "That's a long time, isn't it? A long time for a man
who has been losing his health. And yet----" There was a mirthless smile
on Dakota's face--"ten years is a longer time for a man in good health who
hasn't been happy. Couldn't your father have doctored--gone abroad--to
recover his health? Or was his a mental sickness?"

"Mental, I think. He worried quite a little."

Dakota turned from her, but not quickly enough to conceal the light of
savage joy that flashed suddenly into his eyes.

"Why!" exclaimed Sheila, voicing her surprise at the startling change in
his manner; "that seems to please you!"

"It does." He laughed oddly. "It pleases me to find that I'm to have a
neighbor who is afflicted with the sort of sickness that has been
bothering me for--for a good many years."

There was a silence, during which Sheila yawned and Dakota stood
motionless, looking straight ahead.

"You like your father, I reckon?" came his voice presently, as his gaze
went to her again.

"Of course." She looked up at him in surprise. "Why shouldn't I like
him?"

"Of course you like him. Mostly children like their fathers."

"Children!" She glared scornfully at him. "I am twenty-two! I told you