of her heart's choice.

Unfortunately, Trego was indifferent to tempered rebuffs.

"If you don't mind," he interrupted one of Sally's protracted snubs,
"I'll just stick around and keep on enjoying the society of a human
being. Of course, I know these others are all human in their way, but
it isn't your way or mine. Perhaps it only seems so to me because I
don't understand 'em. It's quite possible. One thing's sure, they
don't understand me. At least, the women don't; I can get along with
the men--most of 'em. They're not a bad lot, if immature. You can
stand a lot of foolishness from children once you realise their
grown-uppishness is only make-believe."

"They don't know how to enjoy themselves," he expatiated; "they've got
too much of everything, including spare time. What's a holiday to
anybody who has never done a stroke of work? You and I know the
difference; we can appreciate the fun of loafing between spells of
work; but these people have got no standards to measure their fun by,
so it's all the same to them--flat, vapid, monotonous, unless they
season it up with cocktails and carrying on; and even that gets to
have all the same flavour of tastelessness after a while. That's why
so many of these women are going in for the suffragette business; it
isn't that they care a whoop for the vote; it's because they want the
excitement of wanting something they haven't got and can't get by
signing a check for it."

"You're prejudiced," the girl objected. "You're at loose-ends
yourself, idle and restless, and it distorts your mental vision. For
my part, I've never met more charming people--"

"That's your astigmatism," he contended. "You've been wanting this
society thing all your life, and now you've got it you're as pleased
as a child with a new toy. Wait till the paint wears off and it won't
shut its eyes when you put it down on its back and sawdust begins to
leak out at the joints."

"Wouldn't it be more kind of you to leave me to discover the sawdust
for myself?"

"It unquestionably would, and I ought to be kicked," Trego agreed
heartily. "I only started this in fun, anyway, to make you see why it
is you look so good to me--different--so sound and sane and wholesome
that I just naturally can't help pestering you."

She did not know what to say to that. She suffered him. . . .

Her duties as secretary to Mrs. Gosnold proved, when inaugurated the
second morning after her arrival, to be at once light and intere