Baron did not wholly succeed in repressing a smile. “All wrong,” he said amiably. “The Greeks must have borne gifts to you before now, Thornburg. No, I’m not tired of her. I’m not likely to be, either. Why, she’s like a tonic. Sense? You wouldn’t believe it. She’s forever surprising you by taking some familiar old idea and making you really see it for the first time. She can stay at our house until the roof falls in, if she only will--though of course I don’t hope she’d be willing to. But don’t think there’s any question of our getting tired of her. She’s not that kind. I might add, neither are we.” Much to his amazement Thornburg sprang to his feet excitedly. “I don’t know what you’re getting at!” he exclaimed. “If you’ve got anything to say, why not say it and be done with it?” [Illustration: “I don’t know what you’re getting at!” he exclaimed. “If you’ve got anything to say, why not say it and be done with it?”] Baron arose, too. He thought he was justified in feeling offended. “I think,” he said quietly, “I haven’t got anything to say, after all.” He managed to keep his voice and eyes under control. These proclaimed no unfriendliness. But his lips had become somewhat rigid. “But you did have,” retorted Thornburg. He sat down again and produced a handkerchief with which he wiped his face and neck nervously. “Come, don’t pay any attention to my bad manners. You know I’ve got a thousand things to worry me.” “Yes, I know. I’m really trying to help--or I had the thought of helping. You--you make it a bit difficult.” “There was something about the little girl,” said Thornburg. “Yes. As to her--status. Chapter I--the inquiry for her, and our little flurry--seems to be completed.” “They probably didn’t care about her very much.” “Well--possibly. At any rate, we seem to have come to a full stop for the time being. And I’ve been thinking about the future. I ought to tell you that after my talk with Mrs. Thornburg, the case didn’t seem quite so simple as it had seemed.” Thornburg, clasping his knee in his hands, was bending upon the floor a gaze darkened by labored thought. “I’ve begun to feel a kind of moral responsibility. At first I thought only of my own point of view. My family’s, I mean. Our interests and pleasures. But you see there’s also something to be said from the standpoint of our--our guest. I wouldn’t want to lessen her chances of future happiness. I wouldn’t want to have my way altogether and then find out after a while that it had been the wrong way. I never realized before how much the people of the stage are born and not made. That’s the gist of the matter. There will come a time when nothing in the world is going to keep Bonnie May off the stage. That’s my conviction now.” “They say children _do_ inherit--” interposed Thornburg.