settled back, partially reassured. "Why do you not make
the settlement direct?" he asked.

"Because I wish her to feel that it is her own, that I have no right
over it whatever."

He thought about this. His eyes were keen as he said: "Is that your
real reason?"

I saw I must be unreserved with him. "Part of it," I replied. "The
rest is--she would not take it from me."

The old man smiled cynically. "Have you tried?" he inquired.

"If I had tried and failed, she would have been on the alert for an
indirect attempt."

"Try her, young man," said he, laughing. "In this day there are few
people anywhere who'd refuse any sum from anybody for anything. And a
woman--and a New York woman--and a New York fashionable woman--and a
daughter of old Ellersly--she'll take it as a baby takes the breast."

"She would not take it," said I.

My tone, though I strove to keep angry protest out of it, because I
needed him, caused him to draw back instantly. "I beg your pardon,"
said he. "I forgot for the moment that I was talking to a man young
enough still to have youth's delusions about women. You'll learn that
they're human, that it's from them we men inherit our weaknesses.
However, let's assume that she won't take it. _Why_ won't she take
your money? What is there about it that repels Ellersly's daughter,
brought up in the sewers of fashionable New York--the sewers, sir?"

"She does not love me," I answered.

"I have hurt you," he said, quickly, in great distress at having
compelled me to expose my secret wound.

"The wound does not ache the worse," said I, "for my showing it--to
_you_." And that was the truth. I looked over toward Dawn Hill, whose
towers could just be seen. "We live there." I pointed. "She is--like a
guest in my house."

When I glanced at him again, his face betrayed a feeling which I doubt
if anyone had thought him capable in many a year. "I see that you love
her," he said, gently as a mother.

"Yes," I replied. And presently I went on: "The idea of anyone I love
being dependent on me in a sordid way is most distasteful to me. And
since she does not love me, does not even like me, it is doubly
necessary that she be independent."

"I confess I do not quite follow you," said he.

"How can she accept anything from me? If she should finally be
compelled by necessity to do it, what hope could I have of her ever
feeling toward me as a wife should feel toward her husband?"

At this explanation of mine his