"When the view is offensive," admitted her father. With unwavering nonchalance he swung around suddenly to the nearest news stand and began then and there to pile Daphne's blue broadcloth arms with every funny paper in sight. From lips quivering so that they could barely function their speech Daphne protested the action. "Why--why, Old-Dad," she pleaded. "Do you think for one single moment that I shall ever smile again? Or--or ever--even want to smile again?" In a fresh shiver of tears and shame the hot tears started to her eyes. "Why I'm nothing but--but just an outlaw!" she gasped. "A--a-- sort of a----" "Personally," conceded her father, "I'd infinitely rather travel with an outlaw than an inlaw! They're so inherently more considerate--somehow, so----" Quite imperturbably as he spoke he kept right on piling up the magazines in Daphne's protesting arms. "Steady there, Kiddie!" he admonished her smilingly. "Steady! Steady! Never let any [61] sorrow you'll ever meet leak into your chance to laugh! Water-tight your compartments--that's the idea! Love, Hope, Fear, Pride, Ambition--everything walled off and separate from another! And then if you run into a bit of bad weather now and then, Little Girl, you won't--" Aghast at the increasing tremor of the little figure he broke off abruptly in the midst of his message. "Why the only trouble with you, Daphne," he laughed, "is that you are so pretty! It's an awful responsibility I tell you to travel with a daughter who's so extravagantly pretty. So many complicating things are bound to happen all the time. Beaux, for instance, and----" "Beaux?" winced Daphne. "Such as the incipient one yonder," nodded her father. Following the general direction of the nod the girl's eyes raked somewhat covertly but none the less thoroughly the shadow just back of the flower booth. "O--h," she shivered. "_That_?" Back of her lovely blondeness, her youth, her vitality, the delicate fine-boned structure of her face [62] loomed suddenly into the faint, poignant outline of the ultimate skull. "Do--do you think he's a reporter?" she stammered. "Reporter _nothing_!" snapped her father. Snatching up the traveling bags he headed quite precipitously for the train. White as a little ghost Daphne pattered after him. Close at her heels followed the blue hound. "What a stunning looking man!" said someone. "And what an awfully pretty girl!" murmured another. "And what a funny looking dog!" agreed everybody. "For goodness sake, don't you know who it is?" called the girl at the flower booth to the girl at the news-stand. "Naw," admitted the girl at the news-stand. "Oh, pshaw," preened the girl at the flower booth. "Don't you know anything? Why it's Jaffrey Bretton the--the--well, I don't know what he is except that he's richer than--oh, richer than Croesus! And wild? Oh, Gee! Why I knew a chauffeur once that knew a cook that said----"