When Winn reached home, he found two messages awaiting him, one from Ethel Sherman asking him to call, and another bidding him journey to the home of his boyhood and attend to a business matter at once. His birthplace, an almost worthless hillside farm, had been leased to strangers, but they had scarce obtained a living and, finally, having denuded it of about everything except the stones and the old weather-beaten farmhouse, had deserted it, leaving three years' taxes unpaid. And Winn, the sole heir, was now asked to come and pay them, or allow his boyhood home to be sold for that purpose. This, following the bitter disappointment of his Rockhaven trip, seemed the last straw; and when he called upon Ethel, as perforce he felt he must, he was in an unenviable frame of mind. But she was sweetness personified. "Why, Winn, my dear friend," she said, "what have I done to you that you should desert me so? It's been three weeks since I've set eyes upon you except at church, and then you would not look at me." "I don't imagine that you have suffered much," replied Winn, savagely, looking at an immense bunch of American Beauty roses on the centre-table, and thinking of Simmons. "I am a worker in the hive these days, and 'sassiety' isn't for me." Ethel looked at him and laughed. "My dear boy," she said sweetly, "you ought to send your temper to the laundry and feel grateful I wanted to see you. I refused an invitation to the opera this eve just to have a visit with you, and you come cross as two sticks." "I'm sorry," he answered, "but I have troubles of my own, and life isn't all a picnic. For instance, I've got to take a two-hundred-mile ride into the country to-morrow, pay up the taxes, and find a tenant for the old farm. I've just returned from a business trip, away five days, and the editor told me this afternoon if I wanted more time off now I'd better resign." "He's a brute," said Ethel. "No, he's a business man," replied Winn, "and I'm his servant, that is all. I don't intend to be much longer, or any man's for that matter." "I'm so glad," she asserted, in the cooing, sympathetic tone a woman knows so well how to use; "you are capable of better things, Winn, and I shall welcome the day when you are your own master." Then Winn, his vexed spirit soothed by this woman's gentle sympathy, his self-respect restored by her praise, looked at her admiringly. "Ethel," he said, "you can mark the two extremes of womankind--angel or devil--with equal facility. If ever I attempt a novel, you shall be the heroine." "Better not," she laughed. "I've no sentiment, and a heroine without a heart would be a flat failure. No," she continued musingly, "I've not even a little one. I used to think I had, but I've outgrown it. Sentiment on a woman's part these days is a weakness for men to trample upon. Sister Grace had sentiment. Now she lives in four rooms and tends baby, while hubby escapes to the club. No, thanks. No sentiment in mine, please."