“Isn’t there a philosophy current that we find in people what we look for in them? Perhaps that is why you and Mr. Harley read in Mr. Ridgway men so diverse as you do. It is not impossible you are both right and both wrong. Heaven knows, I suppose. At least, we poor mortals fog around enough when we sit in judgment.” And Virginia shrugged the matter from her careless shoulders. But Aline seemed to have a difficulty in getting away from the subject. “And you—what do you read?” she asked timidly. “Sometimes one thing and sometimes another. To-day I see him as a living refutation of all the copy-book rules to success. He shatters the maxims with a touch-and-go manner that is fascinating in its immorality. A gambler, a plunger, an adventurer, he wins when a careful, honest business man would fail to a certainty.” Aline was amazed. “You misjudge him. I am sure you do. But if you think this of him why—” “Why do I marry him? I have asked myself that a hundred times, my dear. I wish I knew. I have told you what I see in him to-day; but tomorrow—why, to-morrow I shall see him an altogether different man. He will be perhaps a radiating center of altruism, devoted to his friends, a level-headed protector of the working classes, a patron of the arts in his own clearminded, unlettered way. But whatever point of view one gets at him, he spares one dullness. Will you explain to me, my dear, why picturesque rascality is so much more likable than humdrum virtue?” Mrs. Harley’s eyes blazed. “And you can talk this way of the man you are going to marry, a man—” She broke off, her voice choked. Miss Balfour was cool as a custard. “I can, my dear, and without the least disloyalty. In point of fact, he asked me to tell you the kind of man I think him. I’m trying to oblige him, you see.” “He asked you—to tell me this about him?” Aline pulled in her pony in order to read with her astonished eyes the amused ones of her companion. “Yes. He was afraid you were making too much of his saving you. He thinks he won’t do to set on a pedestal.” “Then I think all the more of him for his modesty.” “Don’t invest too heavily on his modesty, my dear. He wouldn’t be the man he is if he owned much of that commodity.” “The man he is?” “Yes, the man born to win, the man certain of himself no matter what the odds against him. He knows he is a man of destiny; knows quite well that there is something big about him that dwarfs other men. I know it, too. Wherefore I seize my opportunity. It would be a sin to let a man like that get away from one. I could never forgive myself,” she concluded airily. “Don’t you see any human, lovable things in him?” Aline’s voice was an accusation. “He is the staunchest friend conceivable. No trouble is too great for him to take for one he likes, and where once he gives his trust he does not take it back. Oh, for all his force, he is intensely human! Take his vanity, my dear. It soars to heaven.”