Ever since her childhood had Rhoda stood thus wistfully between her parents. Between her father and herself there was always intellectual understanding. Their minds worked alike and they saw things in the same way, just as in facial and bodily appearance there was much resemblance between them. But it seemed to Rhoda that this very physical and mental likeness had caused him to hold her at a distance. Even as a little girl he had never welcomed her affectionate advances as he had Charlotte’s. She, on the other hand, had always been drawn to him more than to her mother, and she could still remember many a time when, a little thing in pantalettes and short dresses, she had slipped away with a trembling lip and hidden herself to fight back the tears which would come because he had taken Charlotte up in his arms and kissed her and had ignored Charlotte’s elder sister. As she grew older they had become good friends and she knew that he liked to make a companion of her and that he talked with her much more freely than with Charlotte. But between them there was never any expression of sentiment. And now her aching heart was longing for understanding, sympathy, tenderness, love, all from one source, without having to make revelation of itself. What she really wanted, although she was not well enough versed in self-analysis to know it, was something that would take the place of the love she was casting aside,--or, more accurately, that love itself. She came near enough to such knowledge to say to herself, in the midst of her unhappiness, “Jeff would understand and--and be sorry, if I could only tell him all about it!” And then she smiled, seeing the absurdity of the idea. But notwithstanding her little flash of amusement at herself she felt vaguely, in the background of her woe-filled consciousness, that only the supreme love between man and woman can carry that full measure of comprehension, sympathy, tolerance and affection for which human nature forever yearns. Finally it was to her father she went, when he returned in the late afternoon. “I know you’re tired, father,” she hesitated at the door of his office as she saw him stretched, coatless, upon the lounge, “but I’d like to see you a little while--and it’s important.” “Come in, Rhoda. What is it? The Mallard child? Not getting worse, is it?” “No. It’s--it’s about me. I’ve made up my mind to-day, father, that I won’t marry Mr. Delavan.” He sat up and across his face and into his eyes leaped the expression of pleased satisfaction that she had known would shine there at her news. But all he said was: “You’ve decided wisely, I think.” Nevertheless, his professional eye had already noted the signs still lingering in her countenance of her afternoon’s vigil alone with her heart, and if she could have known what compassion and tenderness stirred in his breast she would have been surprised and comforted.