would do for Anne, who was not a Vanhorn, but merely a Douglas. He had showed some liking for the girl; the affair should be encouraged and clinched. She, Katharine Vanhorn, would clinch it. He must be a very different man from the diagnosis she had made up of him if he did not yield to her clinching. During these weeks, therefore, there had been many long conversations between Anne and Mr. Dexter; they had talked on many subjects appropriate to the occasion--Dexter was always appropriate. He had quoted pages of poetry, and he quoted well. He had, like Othello, related his adventures, and they were thrilling and true. Then, when more sure of her, he had turned the conversation upon herself. It is a fascinating subject--one's self! Anne touched it timidly here and there, but, never having had the habit or even the knowledge of self-analysis, she was more uncomfortable than pleased, after all, and inclined mentally to run away. She did not know herself whether she had more imagination than timidity, whether conscientiousness was more developed in her than ideality, or whether, if obliged to choose between saving the life of a brother or a husband, she would choose the former or the latter. Dexter had to drag her opinions of her own character from her almost by main strength. But he persisted. He had never known an imaginative young girl at the age when all things are problems to her who was not secretly, often openly, fascinated by a sympathetic research into her own timid little characteristics, opening like buds within her one by one. Dexter's theory was correct, his rule a good one probably in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred; only--Anne was the hundredth. She began to be afraid of him as he came toward her, kind, smiling, with his invisible air of success about him, ready for one of their long conversations. Yet certainly he was as pleasant a companion as a somewhat lonely young girl, isolated at a place like Caryl's, could wish for; at least that is what every one would have said. During these weeks there had been no long talks with Heathcote. Miss Vanhorn did not ask him to accompany them to the woods; she did not utter to him the initiative word in passing which gives the opportunity. Still, there had been chance meetings and chance words, of course--five-minute strolls on the piazza, five-minute looks at the sunset or at the stars, in the pauses between the dances. But where Heathcote took a minute, Dexter had, if he chose, an hour.