ave been! Leonard would have made her happy. Arthur
never can, and she can never make him so. But what he has done is not
all: look how he did it! Leonard was his beloved and best friend"--

"Except his brother Godfrey"--

"Except no one, Ruth, unless it's you. I'm neither persuasive nor kind,
nor often with him. Proud of him I was, and never prouder than when I
knew him to be furiously in love with her, while yet, for pure, sweet
friendship's sake, he kept standing off, standing off."

"I wish you might have seen it, Godfrey. It was so beautiful--and so
pitiful!"

"It was manly,--gentlemanly; and that was enough. Then all at once he's
taken aback! All control of himself gone, all self-suppression, all
conscience"--

"The conscience has returned," said the girl.

"Oh, not to guide him! Only to goad him! Fifty consciences can't
honorably undo the mischief now!"

"Did I not write you that there was already, then, a coolness between
her and Leonard?"

"Yes; but the whole bigness and littleness of Arthur's small, bad deed
lies in the fact that, though he knew that coolness was but a momentary
tiff, with Isabel in the wrong, he took advantage of it to push his suit
in between and spoil as sweet a match as two hearts were ever making."

"It was more than a tiff, Godfrey; it"--

"Not a bit more! not--a--bit!"

"Yes!--yes--it was a problem! a problem how to harmonize two fine
natures keyed utterly unlike. Leonard saw that. That is why he moved so
slowly."

"Hmm!" The lover stared away grimly. "I know something about slowness.
I suppose it's a virtue--sometimes."

"I think so," said the girl, caressing a flower.

"Ah, well!" responded the other. "She has chosen a nature now that--Oh
me!... Ruth, I shall speak to her mother! I am the only one who can.
I'll see Mrs. Morris some time this evening, and lay the whole thing out
to her as we four see it who have known one another almost from the one
cradle."

Ruth smiled sadly. "You will fail. I think the matter will have to go on
as it is going. And if it does, you must remember, Godfrey, we do not
really know but they may work out the happiest union. At any rate, we
must help them to try."

"If they insist on trying, yes; and that will be the best for Leonard."

"The very best. One thing we do know, Godfrey: Arthur will always be a
passionate lover, and dear Isabel is as honest and loyal as the day is
long."

"The day is not long; this one is not--to me. It's