ea air, and she could get it better in the top of
this old house than anywhere else. But now that she's gone--I can't
stand it. I'm young, and Miss Matthews is away all day teaching--and
when she comes home at night we have nothing in common, and there's the
money left from the insurance--and so--I'm going away."

He looked at her, with her red-gold hair in high relief against the worn
leather of the chair in which she sat, at the flower-like face, the
slender figure, the tiny feet in childish strapped slippers.

"You aren't fit to fight the world," he said; "you aren't fit."

"Perhaps it won't be such a fight," she said. "I could get something to
do in the city, and----"

He shook his head. "You don't know--you can't know----" Then he broke
off to ask, "What would you do with your furniture?"

"Miss Matthews would be glad to take the rooms just as they are. She was
delighted when you asked her to stay with me after mother died. She
loves our old things, the mahogany and the banjo clock, and the
embroidered peacocks, and the Venetian heirlooms that belonged to Dad's
family. But I hate them."

"Hate them--why?"

"Because, oh, you know, because Dad treated mother so dreadfully. He
broke her heart."

His practiced eye saw that she was speaking tensely.

"I wish you'd get me a cup of tea," he said, suddenly. "I'm just from
the sanatorium. I operated on a bad case--and, well, that's sufficient
excuse, isn't it, for me to want to drink a cup of tea with you?"

She was busy in a moment with her hospitality.

"Oh, why didn't you tell me? And you're wet." Her hand touched his coat
lightly as she passed him.

"The rain came so suddenly that I couldn't get the window of my car
closed; it's an awful storm.

"And now," he said, when she had brought the tea on an old Sheffield
tray, and had set it on a little folding table which he placed between
them on the hearth, "and now let's talk about it."

"Please don't try to make me stay----"

"Why not?"

"Because, oh, because you can't know what I suffer here; it isn't just
because I've lost mother, but the people--they all know about her and
about Dad, and they aren't nice to me."

"My dear child!"

"Perhaps it's because father was a singer and an Italian, and mother
came of good old Puritan stock. They seem to think she lowered herself
by marrying him. They can't understand that though he was unkind to her,
he belonged to an aristocratic Venetian family----"

"It