Am I immoral, O Randolph of seventy? Then I dismally fear I am immoral. For these are the pictures, old man, and these the thoughts that produce them—bad as they certainly are for me. For Alicia is my ward—my child. And whatever happens she must not suspect them. With an effort and a corrugated brow I dismissed them as I heard Alicia’s step on the doorway. Very straight and demure she was as she entered, bringing with her that aura of infinitude which always quickens my foolish pulses. "Sit down, Alicia," I waved her to a chair with an attempt at a smile. "Is anything the matter, Uncle Ranny?" "No—no—nothing—" with exaggerated naturalness. "I only wanted to talk to you." "Wasn’t Jimmie cunning!" she laughed, slipping into a chair. "He says he is going to be a writer like Mark Twain and let you sell his books. This environment, he says, is enough to make a writer of any fellow." I laughed. "Tell me, Alicia—" I began briskly enough, and then, noting her eyes upon me, those deep eyes of a woman, I faltered: "Do you—did you—when did this love affair between you and Randolph begin?" Alicia made no answer. "Was it sudden—spontaneous—like that?" and I snapped my fingers, still clinging to the spirit of lightness with which we had left the table. "I have loved all of them—always," she murmured, gazing downward, "ever since I’ve been with them." "I know that—so have I—so do I—" and my laugh sounded in my own ears like the grating of rough metallic surfaces together. "But I don’t go marrying you all—do I? That’s a very serious business, Alicia, this marrying." How dull and prosy the words fell upon the air about me! Does middle age mean being prosy when you mean to be alert, bright and crisp? Yet I feel younger than any of them. Her face lifting slowly and her wide-open gray eyes searching mine suddenly struck me as so piteously sad that I then and there wrote myself down an ass and a cad and turned away to hide my shame. "I know it’s serious, Uncle Ranny!" and her voice was like the muted strings of a violin. "But don’t you think I understand? Please don’t be afraid of me—won’t you trust me—please?" And she left her chair and made a step toward me with an imploring gesture of the hands. "I am not a designing woman," she declared, with a half smile, and then she ran on more vehemently, "I know that Randolph is younger than I. He can tire of me a hundred times before he is ready to marry. Oh, we are a long way from marrying. But he—he begged me to—to be engaged to him and—and for certain reasons that I can’t tell _any one_, I agreed. And I’ll keep my word if he keeps—" and there she paused. A solemn, quite maternal tenderness in her face as she uttered those words so fascinated me that suddenly I saw her anew—a new Alicia—and with a strange tug at the heartstrings I marveled at the miracle.