"You've had your complete round of human experience, Father!" she cried. "Your first--full--untrammeled glimpse of all your Heart's Desires. More of a glimpse, perhaps, than most people get. From your tiniest boyhood, Father, everything just as you wanted it! Just the tutors you chose in just the subjects you chose! Everything then that American colleges could give you! Everything later that European universities could offer you! And then Travel! And more Travel! And more! And more! And then--Love! And then Fame! 'Love, Fame, and Far Lands!' Yes, that's it exactly! Everything just as you chose it! So your only tragedy, Father, lies--as far as I can see--in just little--me! Because I don't happen to like the things that you like, the things that you already have had the first full joy of liking,--you've got to miss altogether your dimmer, second-hand glimpse of happiness! Oh, I'm sorry, Father! Truly I am! Already I sense the hurt of these latter years--the shattered expectations, the incessant disappointments! You who have stared unblinkingly into the face of the sun, robbed in your twilight of even a candle-flame. But, Father?" Grimly, despairingly, but with unfaltering persistence--Youth fighting with its last gasp for the rights of its Youth--she lifted her haggard little face to his. "But, Father!--my tragedy lies in the fact--that at thirty--I've never yet had even my first-hand glimpse of happiness! And now apparently, unless I'm willing to relinquish all hope of ever having it, and consent to 'settle down,' as you call it, with 'good old John Ellbertson'--I'll never even get a gamble--probably--at sighting Happiness second-hand through another person's eyes!" "Oh, but Eve!" protested her father. Nervously he jumped up and began to pace the room. One side of his face was quite grotesquely distorted, and his lean fingers, thrust precipitously into his pockets, were digging frenziedly into their own palms. "Oh, but Eve!" he reiterated sharply, "you will be happy with John! I know you will! John is a--John is a--Underneath all that slowness, that ponderous slowness--that--that--Underneath that--" "That longish--reddish--grayish beard?" interpolated little Eve Edgarton. Glaringly for an instant the old eyes and the young eyes challenged each other, and then the dark eyes retreated suddenly before--not the strength but the weakness of their opponents.