He proved hopelessly dense on those matters with which they had been perfectly familiar. It seemed to her that pleasure and accomplishment, as she understood them, had found no place in his life. The practical quality in his mind showed at every turn of the conversation. He appeared to hunger after hard facts, and the harder these facts were the better he liked them. But he offended in more glaring ways. He was too intense, and his speech too careful and precise, as if he were uncertain as to his grammar, as, indeed, he was. Poor Oakley was vaguely aware that he was not getting on, and the strain told. It slowly dawned upon him that he was not her sort, that where he was concerned, she was quite alien, quite foreign, with interests he could not comprehend, but which gave him a rankling sense of inferiority. He had been moderately well satisfied with himself, as indeed he had good reason to be, but her manner was calculated to rob him of undue pride; he was not accustomed to being treated with mixed indifference and patronage. He asked himself resentfully how it happened that he had never before met such a girl. She fascinated him. The charm of her presence seemed to suddenly create and satisfy a love for the beautiful. With generous enthusiasm he set to work to be entertaining. Then a realization of the awful mental poverty in which he dwelt burst upon him for the first time. He longed for some light and graceful talent with which to bridge the wide gaps between the stubborn heights of his professional erudition. He was profoundly versed on rates, grades, ballast, motive power, and rolling stock, but this solid information was of no avail He could on occasion talk to a swearing section-boss with a grievance and a brogue in a way to make that man his friend for life; he also possessed the happy gift of inspiring his subordinates with a zealous sense of duty, but his social responsibilities numbed his faculties and left him a bankrupt for words. The others gave him no assistance. Mrs. Emory, smiling and good-humored, but silent, bent above her sewing. She was not an acute person, and the situation was lost upon her, while the doctor took only the most casual part in the conversation. Oakley was wondering how he could make his escape, when the door-bell rang. The doctor slipped from the parlor. When he returned he was not alone. He was preceded by a dark young man of one or two and thirty. This was Griffith Ryder, the owner of the Antioch _Herald_. “My dear,” said he, “Mr. Ryder.” Ryder shook hands with the two ladies, and nodded carelessly to Oakley; then, with an easy, graceful compliment, he lounged down in a chair at Miss Emory's side. Constance had turned from the strenuous Oakley to the new-comer with a sense of unmistakable relief. Her mother, too, brightened visibly. She did not entirely approve of Ryder, but he was always entertaining in a lazy, indifferent fashion of his own.