first words and now stood
still, but she still tugged at the invisible chain which held her. She
was panting a little. She shook her head. "Well--anyhow--I want to see
him!" she insisted with a transparently aimless obstinacy like a
frightened child's. "I want to see my father." Paul laughed easily,
"Well, you'd better choose some other time if you want to get anything
out of him. He had turned everybody out and was just settling to work
with a pile of law-books before him. You know how your father looks
under those circumstances!" He held the picture up to her, relentlessly
smiling.

Lydia's lips quivered, but she said nothing.

Paul went on soothingly, "I've only come to take you straight home,
anyhow. Your mother wants you. She said she had one of those fainting
turns again. She said to be sure to bring you."

At the mention of her mother's name, Lydia turned quite pale. She began
to walk slowly back towards the wagon. There was angry, helpless misery
in her dark eyes, but there was no longer any resistance. "Oh, if Mother
needs me--" she murmured. She took the offered hand, stepped into the
wagon and even went through some fitful pretense of responding to the
chorus of facetious good-bys which rose from the group they were
leaving.

She said little or nothing in answer to the young man's kind, cheerful
talk, as they drove along one main thoroughfare after another,
conspicuous by the brilliant, prosperous beauty of their well-fed youth
and their handsome garb, pointed out by people on the sidewalks,
constantly nodding in response to greetings from acquaintances. Lydia
flushed deeply at the first of these salutations, a flush which grew
deeper and deeper as these features of their processional advance
repeated themselves. She put her hand to her throat from time to time as
though it ached and when the red rubber-tired wheels turned noiselessly
in on the asphalt of her home street, she threw the lap-robe brusquely
back from her knees as though for an instant escape.

The young man's pleasant chat stopped. "Look here, Lydia," he said in
another tone, one that forced her eyes to meet his, "look here, don't
you forget one thing!" His voice was deep with the sincerest sympathy,
his eyes full of emotion, "Don't you forget, little Lydia, that nobody's
sorrier for you than I am! And I don't want anything that--" he cried
out in sudden passion--"Good Lord, I'd be cut to bits before I'd even
_want_ anything that wasn't be