like the silly thing called society any more
than I do."

There was daylight enough to show him the blaze of bravado in her eyes.
Her way of holding her head had a certain daring--the daring of one too
frank, perhaps too proud, to shrink at truth. "Oh, I don't know. I dare
say I should have liked society well enough if society had liked me. But
it didn't. As mamma says, I wasn't a success." To compel him to view her
in all her lack of charm, she added, with a persistent smile, "You know
that, don't you?"

He did know it, though he could hardly say so. He had heard Claude
descant on the subject many a time in the years when Lois was still
putting in a timid appearance at dances. Claude was interested in
everything that had to do with girls, from their clothes to their
complexions.

"Can't make it out," he would say at breakfast, after a party; "dances
well; dresses well; but doesn't take. Fellows afraid of her. Everybody
shy of a girl who isn't popular. Hasn't enough devil. Girl ought to have
some devil, hang it all! Dance with her myself? Well, I do--about three
times a year. Have her left on my hands an hour at a time. Fellow can't
afford that. Think we have no chivalry? Should come to dances yourself,
old chap. You'd be a godsend to the girls in the dump."

Thor's dancing days were over before Lois's had begun, but he could
imagine what they had been to her. He could look back over the four or
five years that separated her from the ordeal, and still see her in "the
dump"--tall, timid, furtively watching the young men with those swimming
brown orbs of hers, wondering whether or not she should have a partner;
heartsore under her finery, often driving homeward in the weary early
hours with tears streaming down her cheeks. He knew as much about it as
if he had been with her. He suffered for her retrospectively. He did it
to a degree that made his long face sorrowful.

The sorrow caused Lois some impatience. "For mercy's sake, Thor, don't
look at me like that! It isn't as bad as you seem to think. I don't mind
it."

"But I do," he declared, with indignation, only to feel that he was
slowly coloring.

He colored because the statement brought him within measurable distance
of a declaration which he meant to make, but for which he was not ready.

She seemed to divine his embarrassment, speaking with forced lightness.
"Please don't waste your sympathy on me. If any one's to be pitied, it's
mamma. I'm such a disappoin