She leaned over and set her empty cup on the table. “I am immensely interested,” she said. “A Republican is almost as curious as the famed ‘Jabberwock.’ It isn’t possible that you are making Republicans up in the timberlands?” “Some one must have told you so,” he retorted quietly, a flicker of humor in his grave eyes; “they look upon me here as they would on a fox in a chicken-yard.” She colored; she did not want to speak of her father or her cousin. “You see what a busy thing rumor is,” she said. “You divine how harmless I am,” he went on, stooping again to throw another stick into the blaze; “a single Republican in a wilderness of Democrats. I’m no better than one old woodchuck in a cornfield.” “A little leaven will leaven the whole lump,” she laughed. Her new tone, which was easy now and almost friendly, touched him and melted his reserve; he looked up smiling and caught her beauty and warmth, the lovely contour of her face. Her hat had been lost, and the fire was drying her moist hair, which was loosened in soft curls about her forehead. Her presence there began to reach the man’s inner consciousness, from which he had been trying to shut her out. He was fighting to bar his thought against her, and her lovely presence in his room seemed to diffuse a warmth and color and happiness that made his pulses throb more quickly. Even the dog felt her benign influence and looked up at her approvingly. Trench steadied his mind to answer her banter in her own tone. “The lump will reject the leaven first, I fear,” he said lightly; “I never dreamed of such vivid convictions with so little knowledge,” he added. “I come from a race of calm reasoners; my people were Quakers.” “Oh!” She blushed as the exclamation escaped her, for she had suddenly remembered the six cents and understood the absurdity of his seven-mile walk; it was the Quaker in him. “I know nothing in the world about Quakers beyond their--their--” “Hats?” he laughed; “like cardinals, they have that distinction.” “Do you think me very ignorant?” she asked, unconscious that she was bridging the social chasm again and again, that she had, indeed, forgotten it in her interest in the man. His dog had come over now and laid his head in Diana’s lap, and she caressed it unconsciously; the dumb overture of friendship always touched her. Trench turned. The firelight was on both their faces, and he met her eyes with that luminous glance which seemed to compel hers. “It would be very difficult for me to tell you what I think of you,” he said deliberately, but with a humorous kindness in his voice.