ut if Mr. Tredegar and
Halford Gaines think your plan unbusinesslike----"

"Mr. Tredegar and Halford Gaines are certain to think it so. And that is
why I said, just now, that it comes, in the end, to your choosing
between us; taking them on experience or taking me on faith."

She looked at him wistfully. "Of course I should expect to give up
things.... You wouldn't want me to live here?"

"I should not ask you to," he said, half-smiling.

"I suppose there would be a good many things we couldn't do----"

"You would certainly have less money for a number of years; after that,
I believe you would have more rather than less; but I should not want
you to think that, beyond a reasonable point, the prosperity of the
mills was ever to be measured by your dividends."

"No." She leaned back wearily among the pillows. "I suppose, for
instance, we should have to give up Europe this summer----?"

Here at last was the bottom of her thought! It was always on the
immediate pleasure that her soul hung: she had not enough imagination to
look beyond, even in the projecting of her own desires. And it was on
his knowledge of this limitation that Amherst had deliberately built.

"I don't see how you could go to Europe," he said.

"The doctor thinks I need it," she faltered.

"In that case, of course--" He stood up, not abruptly, or with any show
of irritation, but as if accepting this as her final answer. "What you
need most, in the meantime, is a little sleep," he said. "I will tell
your maid not to disturb you in the morning." He had returned to his
soothing way of speech, as though definitely resigned to the inutility
of farther argument. "And I will say goodbye now," he continued,
"because I shall probably take an early train, before you wake----"

She sat up with a start. "An early train? Why, where are you going?"

"I must go to Chicago some time this month, and as I shall not be wanted
here tomorrow I might as well run out there at once, and join you next
week at Lynbrook."

Bessy had grown pale. "But I don't understand----"

Their eyes met. "Can't you understand that I am human enough to prefer,
under the circumstances, not being present at tomorrow's meeting?" he
said with a dry laugh.

She sank back with a moan of discouragement, turning her face away as he
began to move toward his room.

"Shall I put the light out?" he asked, pausing with his hand on the
electric button.

"Yes, please."

He pushed in the butt