man far less compellingly vital and lovely. Against
Charlotte's vivid reality, he set a little ghost with a pale face and
wistful gray eyes and a plaintive voice, a little ghost too sensitive
to be quite strong, too shy to be self-confident and self-sufficient,
too tender to be altogether brave; and with this very sensitiveness,
this shyness, this uncourageous tenderness, the little ghost held him.
She held him because her eyes were wistfully gray instead of
triumphantly blue, because her voice was hauntingly plaintive instead
of firmly buoyant; she held him because in her soul there was a strain
of weakness, of timidity, of childlike helplessness and innocence that
to him was at once piteous and exquisite. She held him by all those
qualities--and shortcomings--most unlike Charlotte. He saw that
Charlotte was, as Sheila had asserted, just the woman for a man of his
indolent, dallying temperament; he saw that he needed such a woman.
But he saw, too, that Sheila needed him, that she had always needed
him, that she would always need him; and from that consciousness of her
need he could not wrench himself free.

He would never be free of his little, pale ghost. If he married
Charlotte, it would be for Sheila's sake. _If_ he married
Charlotte----!

Well, he might marry Charlotte. Sheila had said that he could, and
perhaps she had been right. In these later years, since Charlotte had
been a woman, a cordial friendship had sprung up between them.
Whenever she had been in Shadyville, he had been much with her, and in
her absences there had been letters. For several years, whether in
Shadyville or away, she had been a presence in his life; they had many
tastes and interests in common; she was kind to him--encouragingly
kind. It seemed probable that he could marry her; at least there was
ground for trying to do so. Yet how could he offer less than his best
to a creature so fine, so honest, so loyal as he knew Charlotte to be?

That something weighed on his mind, that he was observing her with
unwonted gravity, Charlotte perceived before the dinner was over.

Afterward she took him with her into the garden and they sat down there
in the mild spring night, surrounded by flowers, regarded by
innumerable stars. The night, the flowers, the stars, all appeared to
be conspiring for Charlotte. They created an atmosphere of poetry for
her; they threw over her a glamour that, with her obvious type of
beauty, her downright a