gland. Hasn't he been there speaking within the month?"

"He is in England now," said Rose still wonderingly, still seeking to
finish that phase and escape to her own requirements.

"Mr. Grant said you speak, at times."

"I am sorry he said that," Rose declared, recovering herself to an
unshaded candor. "I shall never do it again."

Electra was smiling very winningly.

"Not over here?" she suggested. "Not before one or two clubs, all women,
you know, all thoughtful, all earnest?"

Rose answered coldly,--

"I am not in sympathy with the ideas my father talks about."

"Not with the Brotherhood!"

"Not as my father talks about it." She grew restive. Under Electra's
impenetrable courtesy she was committing herself to declarations that
had been, heretofore, sealed in her secret thought. "I want to talk to
you," she said desperately, with the winning pathos of a child denied,
"not about my father,--about other things."

"This is always the way," said Electra pleasantly, with her immutable
determination behind the words. "He is your father, and your familiarity
makes you indifferent to him. There are a million things I should like
to know about Markham MacLeod,--what he eats and wears, almost. Couldn't
you tell me what induced him--what sudden, vital thing, I mean--to stop
his essay-writing and found the Brotherhood?"

Rose answered coldly, and as if from irresistible impulse,--

"My father's books never paid."

Electra gazed at her, with wide-eyed reproach.

"You don't give that as a reason!"

Rose had recovered herself and remembered again the things she meant to
leave untouched.

"No," she said, "I don't give it as a reason. I only give it."

Electra was looking at her, rebuffed and puzzled; then a ray shot
through her fog.

"Ah," she said, "wouldn't it be one of the inconceivable things if we
who have followed his work and studied him at a distance knew him better
than you who have had the privilege of knowing him at first hand?"

In spite of herself, Rose answered dryly,--

"It would be strange."

But Electra had not heard. There was the sound of wheels on the drive,
and she looked out, to see Madam Fulton alighting.

"Excuse me, one moment," she said. "My grandmother has come home from
town."

When Rose was alone in the room, she put her hand to her throat to
soothe its aching. There were tears in her eyes. She seemed to have
attempted an impossible task. But presently Electra was entering ag