ous.

And then I looked up and saw him coming toward me, his great dog
trotting at his side. I pulled myself together, and smiled; for
Boris was thrusting his friendly nose into my palm, and rubbing his
fine head against my shoulder, and his master had dropped lightly
down beside me.

I had not seen Mr. Jelnik for several days, and it struck me
painfully that the man was pale, that his step dragged, and the
brightness of his beauty was dimmed. He looked older, more careworn.
If he was glad to see me, it was at first a troubled gladness, for
he started, and bit his lip. I wondered, not with jealousy, but with
pain, if there was somebody, some beautiful and high-born lady, at
sight of whom his heart might have leaped as mine did now. Was it,
perhaps, to forget such a one that he had exiled himself?

"You are such a serene, restful little person!" he said presently,
and a change came over his tired face; "and I am such a restless
one! You soothe me like a cool hand on a hot forehead."

"Restless?--you? Why, I thought you the serenest person I had ever
known."

His mocking, gentle smile curved his lips. But his eyes were not
laughing. For a fleeting, flashing second the whirlpools and the
depths were bared in them. Then the veil fell, the surface lights
came out and danced.

"My father was an excellent teacher," he said, indifferently. "The
whole object of his training was self-control. He was really a very
wonderful man, my father. But he overlooked one highly important
factor in my make-up, my Hynds blood."

I made no reply. I was wondering, perplexedly, how I, I of all
people, should have been picked up and enmeshed in the web of these
Hyndses and their fate.

"Thank you," said he, gratefully, "for your silence. Most women
would have talked, for the good of my soul. Why don't you talk?"

"Because I have nothing to say."

"You evidently inherited a God-sent reticence from your British
forebears. The British have 'illuminating flashes of silence.' It is
one of their saving graces."

I proved it.

Mr. Jelnik, with a whimsical, sidewise glance, drew nearer.

"Why, instead of sitting at the foot of a pine-tree, which is also a
reticent creature, are you not sitting at the feet of our friend The
Author, who is perfectly willing to illumine the universe? Very
bright man, The Author. How do you like his secretary?"

"Mr. Johnson? Oh, very much indeed! He is charming!"

"I find him so myself. But he is meltin