Had she been able to see the growing intimacy between Lola and the old man of whom she was so fond, it is probable that her fears would not have been so easily overcome. They were chatting away already quite like old friends. Lola was leading him to tell of some of his adventures in the lumber camps of Northern Michigan, and incidentally gaining a good idea of his vast power in that region and of the great value of his timber lands and pulp mills. She was a good listener, interrupting him only to encourage his confidence and quick to see and appreciate any good points in his somewhat long, drawn-out stories of personal prowess. He looked at her with great approval. "Here was a girl who had real brain, who knew a man when she saw one, and was not either afraid of or repelled by a few white hairs." Her fresh beauty and something in the bold friendliness of her eyes as she sat looking at him thrilled him as no woman had had the power to thrill him for years. How wonderful it would be, he thought, if--but no; she was young. What chance after all would his millions have with a girl like this? What need she care for wealth with beauty like hers? Dick Fenway was probably the lucky man. Damned young loafer. Good God! How gladly he would give all he had to be that age again! To be thirty and back in the lumber country with his axe, and his youth, and his girl! Strong desires, fought down and smothered out of respect for a dead wife and a living daughter, blazed up again, fired by a spark from this young woman's eye. There was something in her look that seemed to tell him that to her he was not old, not rich, not past all chance of woman's love or hope of romance. She was looking into his eyes as women had looked years ago, and she was finding there what they had found. She was seated very close to him, bending forward, eagerly listening to his story, her hand resting on the arm of his chair touched his; she did not draw it away; how warm it was, how soft. What was this woman? This young girl, who in a few moments had gained the power to stir into life feelings that he thought had been forever buried with the other things that had made life so sweet? What was there in her boldness that charmed without offending him? The story he was telling ended abruptly in the middle. They sat there in the gathering darkness silently. The little warm hand that lay beside his own slowly turned and closed about his. His heart leaped; he bent toward her, but she sprang up with a low laugh, and before he could speak she was gone. Alice found him there when she came down a little later. "How well you look, father dear," she exclaimed. "I am sure that this place is doing you good. You look almost young." "Why shouldn't I?" he answered gayly. "A man is as old as he feels, and I don't feel like an old man to-night." As they went in to dinner they met Dick Fenway waiting in the hall.