"

"H lne!" cried Lew, putting out quick hands toward her. "Oh, I'm
sorry--I'm sorry I said that!"

His contrition was so deep, so true, that H lne smiled, to put him at
his ease.

"It's all right, Lew; it's all right that you saw," she said evenly.
"Come here. Sit down here. Now, what have you got to tell me?"

Lewis was still frowning.

"It seemed," he said, "such a big thing. Now, somehow, it doesn't seem
so big. I just wanted to tell you that Folly has come around at last.
We're going to be married."

For a long moment there was silence, then H lne said: "You love her,
Lew? You're sure you love her?"

Lewis nodded his head vehemently.

"And you're sure she loves you?" asked H lne.

"Yes," said Lewis, not so positively. "In her way she does. She says
she's wanted me from the first day she saw me."

H lne sat down. She held one knee in her locked hands. Her face was
half turned from Lewis. She was staring out through the narrow, Gothic
panes of the broad window. Her face was still pale and set. Lewis's eyes
swept over her. Her beauty struck him as never before. Something had
been added to it. H lne seemed to him a girl, a frail girl. How could
he ever have thought this Woman worldly! Her fragrance reached him. It
was a fragrance that had no weight, but it bound him--bound him hand and
foot in its gossamer web. He felt that he ought to struggle, but that he
did not wish to. He waited for H lne to speak.

"Love," she said at last, "is a terrible thing. Young people don't know
what a terrible thing it is. We talk about the word 'love' being so
abused. We think we abuse it, but it's love that abuses itself. There
are so many kinds of love, and every big family is bound to include a
certain number of rotters. Love isn't terrible through the things we do
to it; it's terrible for the things it does to us."

H lne paused.

"I'm glad you saw what you did to-day because it will make it easier for
you to understand. Tour father loves me, and I love him. It's not the
love of youth. It's the love of sanity. The love of sanity is a fine,
stalwart love, but it hasn't the unnamable sweetness or the ineffaceable
bitterness of the love of youth. Years ago your father wanted to take me
away from--from what you saw. There did not seem to be any reason why we
should not go. He and I--we're not wedded to any place or to any time.
We have a World that's ours alone. We could take it with us wherever we
went."

"H lne," whi