"Boy," he broke in roughly, "I hope you'll always talk and write what you believe and nothing else! I wouldn't give a picayune for any chap who didn't!" I could feel him watching anxiously my affair with Eleanore. In the days when she had come to the house he had grown very fond of her, and now by frequent questions, slipped in with a studied indifference, he showed an interest which in time became a deep suspense. "Out again this evening, son?" he called in one night from the bathroom where he was washing his hands and face before going down to supper. In my room adjoining I was dressing to go out. "Yes, Dad." "What for?" "Some work." "Be out for dinner too?" "Yes." "Who with?" "Oh, a pilot," I answered abstractedly. I was wondering if she would wear her blue gown. She had asked quite a number of people that night. Then I saw Dad in the doorway. Briskly rubbing his gray head with a towel, he was eyeing my evening clothes. "Devilish polished chaps these days--pilots," he commented. I heard a low snort of glee from his room. My sister, on the other hand, had no more patience than before with this fast deepening love of mine, which had drawn me away from her radical friends up to the men of the tower who worked for the big companies. By the most vigorous ironies, the most industrious witty remarks, she made me feel how thoroughly she disapproved of anything so deadening as marriage, home and settling down, in this glorious age of new ideas. One morning at breakfast, when I remarked as I commonly did that I would be out for dinner that night, "Where are you going?" she asked abruptly. "To Eleanore Dillon's," I replied. Our eyes met squarely for a moment. "Do you know what it means to go there so often, almost every night?" she asked. "I do," I answered bluntly. I would finish this meddling once and for all. But Sue did not look finished. "You'd better stay home to-night, Billy," she said. "Why?" "Joe Kramer is coming." "What?" "He telephoned me late last night. He's just come from Colorado and he sails to-morrow for England. He's awfully anxious to see you." Of course he was, and I knew what about! I saw at once by the look on her face that Sue had told him all about me and had begged him to see what he could do. Why couldn't they leave a fellow alone, I said wrathfully to myself. But my ire softened when I met Joe. In the year and a half since I had seen him the lines in his face had deepened, the stoop of his big shoulders had grown even more pronounced, and again I felt that wistful, frowning, searching quality in him. Beneath his gruffness and his jeers he was so honestly pushing on for what he could find most real in life. A wave of the old affection came over me suddenly without warning. Vaguely I wondered about it. Why did he always grip me so?