muse?'

'Do I seem to behave like a muse? How tiresome I must be,' smiled
Althea.

'Not tiresome, rather impressive. It's like looking up suddenly from
some nocturnal _fete_--all Japanese lanterns and fireworks--and seeing
the moon gazing down serenely and unseeingly upon one; it startles and
sobers one a little, you know.'

'I suppose you are sober sometimes,' said Althea, continuing to smile.

'Lord, yes!' Gerald laughed. 'Really and truly, Miss Jakes, I'm only
playing at being a child, you know. I'm quite a serious person. I like
to look at the moon.'

And again Althea blushed. She looked down, sitting straightly in the
corner of their sofa and turning her fan slowly between her fingers,
and, feeling the sense of gracelessness in this too easy success, Gerald
went on in a graver tone. 'I wish you would let me be serious with you
sometimes, Miss Jakes; you'd see I'd quite redeem myself in your eyes.'

'Redeem yourself? From what?'

'Oh! from all your impression of my frivolity and folly. I can talk
about art and literature and the condition of the labouring classes as
wisely as anybody, I assure you.'

He said it so prettily that Althea had to laugh. 'But what makes you
think I can?' she asked, and, delighted with the happy result of his
appeal, he said that Helen had told him all about her wisdoms.

He sounded these wisdoms next day when he asked her to walk with him to
the village. He told her, as they walked, of the various projects for
using his life to some advantage that he had used to make--projects for
improved agricultural methods and the bettering of the conditions of
life in the country. Althea had read a great deal of political economy.
She had, indeed, ground at it and mastered it in the manner advised by
Franklin to Helen. Gerald found her quiet comments and criticisms very
illuminating, not only of his theme, but of his own comparative
ignorance. 'But, Miss Jakes, how did you come to understand all this?'
he ejaculated; and she said, laughing a little at the impression she had
made, that she had only read, gone to a few courses of lectures, and had
a master for one winter in Boston. Gerald looked at her with new
interest. It impressed him that an unprofessional woman should take
anything so seriously. 'Have you gone into other profound things like
this?' he asked; and, still laughing, Althea said that she supposed she
had.

Her sympathy for those old plans of his, based on such understanding