noyed him afresh. "You're an awful goat, not to come near us,"
he felt impelled, in brotherly frankness, to tell her.

She put out her lips, and wagged her head a little, in a gesture which
it flashed across him his own mirror might often have recorded. "I
thought that was all settled and done with long ago," she said, moodily.

"Oh, I won't worry you with it, Lou," he observed, with reassuring
kindness of tone. "I never felt so much like being nice to you in my
life."

She seemed surprised at this, too, and regarded him with a heavy new
fixity of gaze. No verbal comment, apparently, occurred to her.

"Julia and Alfred all right?" he queried, cheerfully.

"I daresay," she made brief answer.

"But they write to you, don't they?"

"SHE does--sometimes. They seem to be doing themselves very well, from
what she says."

"She'd write oftener, if you'd answer her letters," he told her, in
tones of confidential reproach.

"Oh, I don't write letters unless I've got something to say," she
answered, as if the explanation were ample.

The young people were domiciled for the time being at Dusseldorf,
where Alfred had thought he would most like to begin his Continental
student-career, and where Julia, upon the more or less colourable
pretext of learning the language, might enjoy the mingled freedom and
occupation of a home of her own. They had taken a house for the summer
and autumn, and would do the same in Dresden or Munich, later on, for
the winter.

"What I would really have liked," Thorpe confided to his sister now,
"was to have had them both live with me. They would have been as welcome
as the day is long. I could see, of course, in Alfred's case, that if
he's set on being an artist, he ought to study abroad. Even the best
English artists, he says, do that at the beginning. So it was all right
for him to go. But Julia--it was different with her--I was rather keen
about her staying. My wife was just as keen as I was. She took the
greatest fancy to Julia from the very start--and so far as I could
see, Julia liked her all right. In fact, I thought Julia would want to
stay--but somehow she didn't."

"She always spoke very highly of your wife," Mrs. Dabney affirmed with
judicial fairness. "I think she does like her very much."

"Well then what did she want to hyke off to live among those Dutchmen
for, when one of the best houses in England was open to her?" Thorpe
demanded.

"You mustn't ask me," her mother respond