glad
you like her, Uncle Winthrop. I knew you would if you saw her, but I
didn't know you'd see her so much."

"How could I help it if I saw her once? The trouble has been to get
her to see me. Perhaps she thinks I am too old to--"

"Oh, she knows you aren't the sweetheart kind--Miss Robin French told
her so, and mother and everybody says you are too set in your ways to
get married, and that's why I think she likes you, because you aren't
that sort. She hates flum talk, and you talk sense and things. She
told father so. Here she is now. Please stay with Uncle Winthrop,
Cousin Claudia, while I ask mother if I may take dinner with you."
Dorothea got up. "You took off your riding boots, didn't you?"

Claudia looked at her slippers. "I surely did. I never wear high
shoes in the house. Your mother says you may take dinner with us,
but she wants to see you as soon as it is over. Her headache is
better, but she doesn't feel like coming down to-night."

X

A DISCOVERY

In a chair of curious carving, his feet on a pile of books which had
been unpacked, but for which there was as yet no place, Winthrop
Laine leaned back, partly relaxed, partly tense, and with half-shut
eyes looked at a picture on the wall opposite. For an hour, two
hours, he had sat like this. On his desk was an unfinished article,
but "The Punishments of Progress" did not interest to-night, and
after vain effort to write he had thrown the pages aside and yielded
to the unrest which possessed him.

In his hands was a small calendar, and with it he tapped
unconsciously the arm of his chair; but after a while he again looked
at it and with his pencil marked the date of the month. It was the
fifteenth of December. Miss Keith was going home on the eighteenth.
Three days of her visit yet remained, a month of it had passed, and
after she went-- He stirred uneasily, changed his position, put down
the calendar, then got up and began to walk the length of the room
backward and forward. A long mirror filled the space between the two
southern windows, and for some time as he reached it he avoided the
face seen therein; but after a while he stopped in front of it, hands
in his pockets, and spoke with smiling bitterness to it.

"Take it off, man, take it off! All men wear masks, but they needn't
go to bed with them. For years you've pretended, smiled, sworn,
played with all the toys, worked with the best you had, and believed
you were cont