xander's shoulders gave a slight movement, suggestive of
impatience. "Oh, I should think that might have been a safe prediction.
Another cup, please?"

"Yes, thank you. But predicting, in the case of boys, is not so easy as
you might imagine, Mrs. Alexander. Some get a bad hurt early and lose
their courage; and some never get a fair wind. Bartley"--he dropped his
chin on the back of his long hand and looked at her admiringly--"Bartley
caught the wind early, and it has sung in his sails ever since."

Mrs. Alexander sat looking into the fire with intent preoccupation, and
Wilson studied her half-averted face. He liked the suggestion of stormy
possibilities in the proud curve of her lip and nostril. Without that,
he reflected, she would be too cold.

"I should like to know what he was really like when he was a boy. I
don't believe he remembers," she said suddenly. "Won't you smoke, Mr.
Wilson?"

Wilson lit a cigarette. "No, I don't suppose he does. He was never
introspective. He was simply the most tremendous response to stimuli I
have ever known. We didn't know exactly what to do with him."

A servant came in and noiselessly removed the tea-tray. Mrs. Alexander
screened her face from the firelight, which was beginning to throw
wavering bright spots on her dress and hair as the dusk deepened.

"Of course," she said, "I now and again hear stories about things that
happened when he was in college."

"But that isn't what you want." Wilson wrinkled his brows and looked at
her with the smiling familiarity that had come about so quickly. "What
you want is a picture of him, standing back there at the other end of
twenty years. You want to look down through my memory."

She dropped her hands in her lap. "Yes, yes; that's exactly what I
want."

At this moment they heard the front door shut with a jar, and Wilson
laughed as Mrs. Alexander rose quickly. "There he is. Away with
perspective! No past, no future for Bartley; just the fiery moment. The
only moment that ever was or will be in the world!"

The door from the hall opened, a voice called "Winifred?" hurriedly,
and a big man came through the drawing-room with a quick, heavy tread,
bringing with him a smell of cigar smoke and chill out-of-doors air.
When Alexander reached the library door, he switched on the lights
and stood six feet and more in the archway, glowing with strength
and cordiality and rugged, blond good looks. There were other
bridge-builders in the wor