ome to Elkington. I shall not enter into the details of the
legal matter involved. Many times that winter I was a guest at the
yellow-brick house, and I have to confess, as spring came on, that I made
several trips to Elkington which business necessity did not absolutely
demand.

I considered Maude Hutchins, and found the consideration rather a
delightful process. As became an eligible and successful young man, I was
careful not to betray too much interest; and I occupied myself at first
with a review of what I deemed her shortcomings. Not that I was thinking
of marriage--but I had imagined the future Mrs. Paret as tall; Maude was
up to my chin: again, the hair of the fortunate lady was to be dark, and
Maude's was golden red: my ideal had esprit, lightness of touch, the
faculty of seizing just the aspect of a subject that delighted me, and a
knowledge of the world; Maude was simple, direct, and in a word
provincial. Her provinciality, however, was negative rather than
positive, she had no disagreeable mannerisms, her voice was not nasal;
her plasticity appealed to me. I suppose I was lost without knowing it
when I began to think of moulding her.

All of this went on at frequent intervals during the winter, and while I
was organizing the Elkington Power and Traction Company for George I
found time to dine and sup at Maude's house, and to take walks with her.
I thought I detected an incense deliciously sweet; by no means
overpowering, like the lily's, but more like the shy fragrance of the
wood flower. I recall her kind welcomes, the faint deepening of colour in
her cheeks when she greeted me, and while I suspected that she looked up
to me she had a surprising and tantalizing self-command.

There came moments when I grew slightly alarmed, as, for instance, one
Sunday in the early spring when I was dining at the Ezra Hutchins's house
and surprised Mrs. Hutchins's glance on me, suspecting her of seeking to
divine what manner of man I was. I became self-conscious; I dared not
look at Maude, who sat across the table; thereafter I began to feel that
the Hutchins connection regarded me as a suitor. I had grown intimate
with George and his wife, who did not refrain from sly allusions; and
George himself once remarked, with characteristic tact, that I was most
conscientious in my attention to the traction affair; I have reason to
believe they were even less delicate with Maude. This was the logical
time to withdraw--but I dalli