e asked suddenly.

A look of scorn came into Patty's eyes. "He is so superior," she
answered, with a gesture of complete indifference. "I don't like
superior persons."

"Ah," thought Corinna, watching her closely, "she is really interested,
poor child!"

After this the girl went out into a changed world--into a world which
had become, as if by a miracle, less impersonal and unfriendly. The
amber light of the sunset seemed to envelop her softly as if she were
surrounded by happiness. It was like first love without its troubled
suspense, this new wonderful feeling! It was like a religious awakening
without the sense of sin that she associated with her early conversion.
Nothing, she felt, could ever be so beautiful again! Nothing could ever
mean so much to her in the rest of life! In one moment, almost by magic,
she had learned her first lesson in discrimination, in the relative
values of experience; she had attained her first clear perception of the
difference between the things that mattered a little and the things that
mattered profoundly.

The every-day world had faded from her so completely that it seemed a
natural incident--it caused her scarcely a start of surprise--when she
met Stephen Culpeper under the Washington monument. He had evidently
just left his office, for there was a bulky package of papers in his
hand; and he greeted her as if it were the merest accident that had
taken him through the Square. As a matter of fact it was less of an
accident than he made it appear, for he had declined to go home in the
Judge's car because of some vague hope that by walking he might meet
either Patty or Gideon Vetch. Since the evening of the Berkeleys' dinner
the young man's interest had shifted inexplicably from Patty to her
father.

"You looked so much like Mr. Benham a little way off," said Patty, as
he turned to walk back with her, "that I might have mistaken you for
him."

"If you only knew it," he replied, laughing, "you have paid me the
highest compliment of my life."

She blushed. "I didn't mean it as a compliment."

"That makes it all the better. But don't you like Benham?"

Patty pondered the question. "I can't get near enough to him either to
like or dislike him. He is very good looking."

"He is more than good looking. He is magnificent."

"You think a great deal of him?"

"I couldn't think more," he responded with young enthusiasm. "Every one
feels that way about him. He stands for--well, for e