Looking at her, Lynn knew well enough that he had but to loose his firm hold upon himself ever so little, to love her as he might never be able to love another woman. He never had seen, and never expected to see, such beauty as this of Doris's, for the true lover of beauty knows its rarity. And nothing else in the world so appealed to him; no charm of mind, or heart, or spirit, could ever quite make up for the lack of it, notwithstanding that he valued these qualities also, and held them higher than thoughtless youth often holds them. And yet, despite his frank recognition of the truth, he still had no thought of allowing himself to love Doris Wendall. Perhaps, all unsuspected even by himself, the instinct of the Brahmin was in him too; of a certainty, what is bred in the bone is apt to come out in the flesh. But if this were true, if he were influenced by any feeling of caste, he certainly did not suspect it. He was not vain, with the common, harmless vanity of most young men; nor was there in him any unbecoming pride of birth or position. He thought that he was held back solely by his determination to let nothing turn him from his life plans. He was wholly sincere in believing that he was strong enough to stand firm, to keep himself from loving Doris, as he knew he could love her. The thought that she might love him had never crossed his mind. The thought of being able to win her was as far from him as the thought of reaching out his arms to gather a star--so high above all earthly things had his beauty-worship enshrined her. "I wonder what you are thinking about," he said suddenly, that day, with his eyes still on the curve of her cheek. "Of late I have begun to believe that you don't any longer think Miss Judy's thoughts exclusively," he went on, banteringly, in the freedom which now existed between them. "More than once I have seen unmistakable signs of thoughts of your own, thoughts which, moreover, were not in the least like Miss Judy's." Doris turned with a dimpling smile, and lifted her wide-open, frank brown eyes to his darker ones. "You must not laugh at dear Miss Judy. I never allow anybody to do that. I can only wish my thoughts were always as good and sweet as hers." "I haven't made any comparison. I've merely mentioned a difference," Lynn said, laughing teasingly, in the hope that the rare tinge of color might linger longer on her fair cheek. And yet, in a way, he had been quite in earnest in what he had said. It was a fact that he had marked a great change in Doris, that he had come gradually to see that a simple, sound strength of mind, a sort of wholesome common sense, lay under her gentle purity as solid white rock lies under a limpid brook. "Well, it is quite true, I suppose, that Miss Judy never thought, in all her life, of what I was thinking of just then, and what I have been thinking of a great deal lately," Doris said, slowly, shyly, as if approaching a difficult subject.