“Isn't he?” asked Thorpe. “Why no, stupid! He's engaged to Elizabeth Carpenter, Wallace's sister. Now WHERE did you get that silly idea?” “I saw it in the paper.” “And you believe all you see! Why didn't you ask Wallace--but of course you wouldn't! Harry, you are the most incoherent dumb old brute I ever saw! I could shake you! Why don't you say something occasionally when it's needed, instead of sitting dumb as a sphinx and getting into all sorts of trouble? But you never will. I know you. You dear old bear! You NEED a wife to interpret things for you. You speak a different language from most people.” She said this between laughing and crying; between a sense of the ridiculous uselessness of withholding a single timely word, and a tender pathetic intuition of the suffering such a nature must endure. In the prospect of the future she saw her use. It gladdened her and filled her with a serene happiness possible only to those who feel themselves a necessary and integral part in the lives of the ones they love. Dimly she perceived this truth. Dimly beyond it she glimpsed that other great truth of nature, that the human being is rarely completely efficient alone, that in obedience to his greater use he must take to himself a mate before he can succeed. Suddenly she jumped to her feet with an exclamation. “Oh, Harry! I'd forgotten utterly!” she cried in laughing consternation. “I have a luncheon here at half-past one! It's almost that now. I must run and dress. Just look at me; just LOOK! YOU did that!” “I'll wait here until the confounded thing is over,” said Thorpe. “Oh, no, you won't,” replied Hilda decidedly. “You are going down town right now and get something to put on. Then you are coming back here to stay.” Thorpe glanced in surprise at his driver's clothes, and his spiked boots. “Heavens and earth!” he exclaimed, “I should think so! How am I to get out without ruining the floor?” Hilda laughed and drew aside the portiere. “Don't you think you have done that pretty well already?” she asked. “There, don't look so solemn. We're not going to be sorry for a single thing we've done today, are we?” She stood close to him holding the lapels of his jacket in either hand, searching his face wistfully with her fathomless dusky eyes. “No, sweetheart, we are not,” replied Thorpe soberly. Chapter LIX Surely it is useless to follow the sequel in detail, to tell how Hilda persuaded Thorpe to take her money. She aroused skillfully his fighting blood, induced him to use one fortune to rescue another. To a woman such as she this was not a very difficult task in the long run. A few scruples of pride; that was all. “Do not consider its being mine,” she answered to his objections. “Remember the lesson we learned so bitterly. Nothing can be greater than love, not even our poor ideals. You have my love; do not disappoint me by refusing so little a thing as my money.” “I hate to do it,” he replied; “it doesn't look right.”