other than as a family symbol;
and that factitious interest which she had felt at times last year, born
of this man's hostility, was gone long since, effaced by a tide of
stronger feelings. So his sudden exhumation of the topic as a cause of
war now came upon her with the harshest discordance. It seemed almost
like a wanton wounding of her, somehow like sheer disloyalty in him.
Surely if there were need of articles, this man might leave them to
somebody else to write....

Her young gaze was full of an unconscious reproachfulness.

"All that means that you are going to put some more letters in the paper
attacking my father?"

"I'm afraid it's inevitable it will seem so to you."

"Oh,"' said she, it seemed involuntarily, "I don't see how you _can_!"

The young man Mr. V.V. made no reply. It may be that he didn't see how
he could either....

He looked away from the reproachful eyes, slate-blue to match the plumes
in the hat: and there were phrases from his articles singing and kicking
in his head, phrases which would cry in the penny newspaper as no voice
could cry from the wilderness. Ten thousand words he had ready now, in
the old secretary upstairs; hard words all, that broke heads or hearts,
faiths implied too, it might be, and did not care; or didn't mean to
show it if they did. And he thought, too, of a little friend he had,
just pulled back from death's door, and hardly ready for her Trip now,
after ten weeks. So of course there could be no flinching now....

Through the door there came the continuous sounds of the nearness of the
multitude, but these two seemed almost as alone in his old hotel as they
had been on another afternoon long ago.

"Don't you think," said the pretty voice, still not angry--and surely
anger would have been easier to meet than this--"that before doing
anything so--so radical as that, you might wait a little while,
believing that my father would--do what is right?"

The lame doctor brought his eyes back to her and said, slowly: "You see,
I've been worried by the feeling--that I've waited too long already."

"Too long for what? That's just what I mean. What do you think could
possibly happen?"

"For one thing, Miss Heth," he said, with a faint dry smile, "the
building might fall down some day."

Color came into Cally's cheek. Her feeling now was that she had made
advances, spontaneous and friendly, and been smartly rebuffed. What
cared he for the troubles of the Heths?...

"Yo