urage further confidences without
wounding him--this would solve the problem--and she spent an hour
turning over the pages of a book of quotations searching for some
stirring epigrammatic utterance. The wise of all the ages seemed to have
been strangely unmindful of the needs of neurasthenic young men, but
finally she hit upon these lines and copied them in her best hand:--

He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,
That dares not put it to the touch
To gain or lose it all.

She wondered who the Marquis of Montrose was who had lived in the
seventeenth century and bequeathed this quatrain to posterity, but this
didn't matter, and after reading the lines aloud several times she
decided that they would serve her purpose admirably. If Mr. Bennett took
them seriously, well enough; and if he didn't like them it made no
difference as she would probably never meet him again.

She wrote on a calling card, "Best wishes and good luck," and put this
inside the note sheet, and as the hour was late she despatched it to Mr.
Bennett by special messenger.

The note reached Archie just as he was leaving his sister's house. When
he was seated in the train he drew it out and inspected the envelope
carefully, held it to the light and speculated fearfully as to the
nature of its contents. His thoughts had played about Isabel Perry most
of the day and he had listened to his sister's enthusiastic praise of
her with an unusual attention that had not been lost upon Mrs.
Featherstone. He had hoped for a long letter in the vein of the girl's
chaffing humor, and the size of the missive was a distinct
disappointment.

He opened it guardedly, and his face fell as he pondered the verse. It
was a neat, well-bred slap at him as a man without initiative or
courage. At the dinner table she had expressed much the same thought
that was condensed in the verse, but the quotation, unrelieved by her
smile, carried a sting. He read it over until the lines marched with a
nimble step through his memory. There was something oddly haunting in
them, and he experimented with a variety of emphases and pauses,
particularly as to the last line, which he found might be read in a
great number of ways. He decided finally that it was best interpreted by
a little pause after "gain," with the remaining words vanishing in a
despondent sigh. Perhaps this was the way Isabel Perry thought of him,
as a loser in the game of life; but he