"It's good of you to consider my feelings how they grow, and to try to bolster them up," Madeline smiled. "But I am fearfully tired. I must go home. I hope that my father and mother will never hear of this." "Why should they?" said Mr. Lenox. "It's only a trifle after all, though, to be true to her nature, Vera must needs philosophize about it. It's only a trifle." "Except for Dick," Ellery exploded. "Except for Dick," Mr. Lenox echoed. "It's a great pity," Mrs. Lenox meditated, "that Dick can't knock her down and then they could start again on a proper basis." "It is a disadvantage to be a gentleman," laughed her husband. "Vera," said Madeline impulsively, "you won't let this make any difference between us and Mrs. Percival? If she is a little twisted, poor child, she has had a cruel training; and she needs decent women all the more. I--I really have quite got over my anger with her--and don't let us lose Dick. Dick is like my brother. I mustn't break with him. We must all be good to him." "I do not know that I feel any large philanthropy," answered Mrs. Lenox, with something between a laugh and a wry face. "But as I have invited them as well as you to spend Easter with us in the country, I suppose the ordinary laws of society will require me to behave myself." The older woman kissed Madeline warmly, and Ellery moved out with her. He had so entirely made up his mind to walk home with her that he quite forgot to ask her permission. He began to talk to her about himself, for almost the first time in his reticent intimacy, and she forgot her own affairs, as he meant she should, in listening. Afterward she could not remember his words because parallel with them she was reading her own interpretation. Already in a vague way she understood him, but his little story gave her the crystallized impression. She had a picture of a lonely childhood, fatherless and motherless and pervaded with a longing for love that early learned to keep silence. That had been the first step in his self-possession. Education had been hard to get, and yet he had got what to the sons of rich men comes easily, and because to him it meant struggle, it had been the more treasured. Knowledge came hard because his mind worked slowly and painfully; therefore his grip was the tighter, and the habits of thought wrought out by exercise were now giving him a facility that cleverer men might envy. He could not know how the simple history gave her an impression of slow irresistible manhood, always, without drifting, moving toward its chosen end. When they halted at her door, she had a feeling that she could not let him go, just yet. "You'll come in and dine with us, will you not?" she asked impulsively. "I wish I might," he answered with that longing tone one falls into when surveying an impossible and alluring temptation. "I simply have to work to-night. I'm already late for my engagement. May I come sometime soon?"