The youth flushed. "Why--Aunt Molly--how did you know?--I never told--" "No, Neal, you never told me; but this afternoon while you we're out I was looking for Adrian's check-book; I was sure we paid Dorman's bill last April, and that I took the check over myself. I was going through the desk, and I got on your side, thinking I might have left the check-book there by mistake, and I ran into the very midst of those letters, before I knew what I was about. Now, Neal--why?" The young man gazed at the woman seriously for a time and then parried her question with, "Why do you care--what difference can it make to you, Aunt Molly?" "Because," she answered quickly, "because I wish to see my partner happy. He will do better work so--if you desire to put it on a cold-blooded basis. Oh, Nealie, Nealie--do you love her that much--that you take your heart and your life to her without hope or without sign or answer every day?" He dropped his eyes, and turned his face away. "Not every day," he answered, "not every day--but every night, Aunt Molly." "Why don't you go to her, Neal, and tell her?" asked the woman. "Is it so hopeless as that?" "Oh, there are many reasons--why I don't go to her," he replied. After a minute's silence he went on: "In the first place she is a very rich girl, and that makes a difference--now. When she was just a young girl of eighteen, or such a matter, and I only twenty or twenty-one, we met so naturally, and it all came out so beautifully! But we are older now, Aunt Molly," he said sadly, "and it's different." "Yes," admitted Mrs. Brownwell, "it is different now--you are right about it." "Yes," he continued, repeating a patter which he had said to himself a thousand times. "Yes,--and then I can't say I'm sorry--for I'm not. I'd do it again. And I know how Mr. Barclay feels; he didn't leave me in any doubt about that," smiled the boy, "when I left his office that morning after telling him what I was going to do. So," he sighed and smiled in rather hopeless good humour, "I can't see my way out. Can you?" Molly Brownwell leaned back in her chair, and closed her eyes for a minute, and then shook her head, and said, "No, Neal, not now; but there is a way--somehow--I am sure of that." He laughed for want of any words to express his hopelessness, and the two--the youth in despair, and the woman full of hope--sat in silence. "Neal," she asked finally, "what do you put in those letters? Why do you write them at all?"