The instant that Vane had been announced Jeannette Vanlief had left her father's side. She withdrew to the adjoining room, where only a curtain concealed her; the doors had all been taken down for the summer. She did not wish to meet Orson Vane. Over her real feelings for him had come a cloud of doubts and distastes. She had never admitted to herself, openly, that she loved him; she tried to persuade herself that his notorious vagaries had put him beyond her pale. She was determined, now, to be an unseen ear to what might pass between Orson and her father. It was not a nice thing to do, but, for all she knew, her father's very life was at stake. What dire influence might Vane not have over her father? She suspected there was some bond between them; in her father's weakened state it seemed her duty to watch over him with every devotion and alertness. Yet, for a long time, the purport of the conversation quite eluded her. "I have not gone the gamut of humanity," said Orson, "but I have almost, it seems to me, gone the gamut of my own courage." Vanlief nodded. He, too, understood. Consequences! Consequences! How the consequences of this world do spoil the castles one builds in it! Castles in the air may be as pretty as you please, but they are sure to obstruct some other mortal's view of the sky. "If I were younger," sighed Vanlief, "if I were only younger." They did not yet, either of them, dare to be open, brutal, forthright. "I could declare, I suppose," Vanlief went on, "that it was somewhat your own fault. You chose your victims badly. You have, I presume, been disenchanted. You found little that was beautiful, many things that were despicable. The spectacles you borrowed have all turned out smoky. Yet, consider--there are sure to be just as many rosy spectacles as dark ones in the world." "No doubt," assented Vane, though without enthusiasm, "but there are still--the consequences. There is still the chance that I could never repay the soul I take on loan; still the horror of being left to face the rest of my days with a cuckoo in my brain. Mind, I have no reproaches, none at all. You overstated nothing. I have felt, have thought, have done as other men have felt and thought and done; their very inner secret souls have been completely in my keeping. The experiment has been a triumph. Yet it leaves me joyless." "It has made me old," said Vanlief, simply. "Ah," he repeated, "if only I were younger!"