n her blue eyes.

"I am always so foolish about money," she declared, "so ignorant that
I never know how I stand, but really I think that I have plenty, and a
hundred or two more or less for rent didn't seem to matter much."

It was a point of view, this, which Tavernake utterly failed to
comprehend. He looked at her in surprise.

"I suppose," he protested, "you know how much a year you have to live
on?"

She shook her head.

"It seems to vary all the time," she sighed. "There are so many
complications."

He looked at her in amazement.

"After all," he admitted, "you don't look as though you had much of a
head for figures."

"If only I had some one to help me!" she murmured.

Tavernake moved uneasily in his chair. His sense of danger was growing.

"If you will excuse me now," he said, "I think that I must be getting
back. I am an employee at Dowling, Spence & Company's, you know, and my
time is not quite my own. I only came because I promised to."

"Mr. Tavernake," she begged, looking at him full out of those wonderful
blue eyes, "please do me a great favor."

"What is it?" he asked with clumsy ungraciousness.

"Come and see me, every now and then, and let me know how my sister is.
Perhaps you may be able to suggest some way in which I can help her."

Tavernake considered the question for a moment. He was angry with
himself for the unaccountable sense of pleasure which her suggestion had
given him.

"I am not quite sure," he said, "whether I had better come. Beatrice
seemed quite anxious that I should not talk about her to you at all. She
did not like my coming to-day."

"You seem to know a great deal about my sister," Elizabeth declared
reflectively. "You call her by her Christian name and you appear to see
her frequently. Perhaps, even, you are fond of her."

Tavernake met his questioner's inquiring gaze blankly. He was almost
indignant.

"Fond of her!" he exclaimed. "I have never been fond of any one in my
life, or anything--except my work," he added.

She looked at him a little bewildered at first.

"Oh, you strange person!" she cried, her lips breaking into a delightful
smile. "Don't you know that you haven't begun to live at all yet? You
don't even know anything about life, and at the back of it all you have
capacity. Yes," she went on, "I think that you have the capacity for
living."

Her hand fell upon his with a little gesture which was half a caress. He
looked around him as though s