pell' again; if he were where she could see him for
one week, everything would be made up. It is her opinion that he is
suffering from wounded pride, and that the slightest concession on her
part will bring him to his knees before her."

Mrs. Comstock giggled. "I do hope the boy isn't weak-kneed," she said.
"I just happened to be passing the west window this afternoon----"

Elnora laughed. "Nothing save actual knowledge ever would have made me
believe there was a girl in all this world so infatuated with herself.
She speaks casually of her power over men, and boasts of 'bringing a man
to his knees' as complacently as I would pick up a net and say: 'I am
going to take a butterfly.' She honestly believes that if Philip were
with her a short time she could rekindle his love for her and awaken in
him every particle of the old devotion. Mother, the girl is honest! She
is absolutely sincere! She so believes in herself and the strength of
Phil's love for her, that all her life she will believe in and brood
over that thought, unless she is taught differently. So long as she
thinks that, she will nurse wrong ideas and pine over her blighted life.
She must be taught that Phil is absolutely free, and yet he will not go
to her."

"But how on earth are you proposing to teach her that?"

"The way will open."

"Lookey here, Elnora!" cried Mrs. Comstock. "That Carr girl is the
handsomest dark woman I ever saw. She's got to the place where she won't
stop at anything. Her coming here proves that. I don't believe there was
a thing the matter with that automobile. I think that was a scheme she
fixed up to get Phil where she could see him alone, as she worked to
see you. If you are going deliberately to put Philip under her influence
again, you've got to brace yourself for the possibility that she may
win. A man is a weak mortal, where a lovely woman is concerned, and he
never denied that he loved her once. You may make yourself downright
miserable."

"But mother, if she won, it wouldn't make me half so miserable as to
marry Phil myself, and then read hunger for her in his eyes! Some one
has got to suffer over this. If it proves to be me, I'll bear it, and
you'll never hear a whisper of complaint from me. I know the real Philip
Ammon better in our months of work in the fields than she knows him in
all her years of society engagements. So she shall have the hour she
asked, many, many of them, enough to make her acknowledge that she is