"Well, he has me, lots of times," persisted Lydia. "It's awfully exciting--you don't know where you're going, and you can't stop to think, everything tears past you so fast and your breath is so blown out of you. You feel like screaming. You forget everything else, you get so--so stirred up and excited. But after it's over there's always a time when things are flat. And this morning, and all day long, I've felt very--different about what he wants and all. I don't believe I'm very well, perhaps--or maybe--" she broke off, to say with emotion, "Oh, Godfather, wouldn't it be too awful if I should turn out to be without ambition." She pronounced the word with the reverence for its meaning that had been drilled into her all her life, and looked at Dr. Melton with troubled eyes. He thrust his lips out with a grimace habitual to him in moments of feeling, and for an instant said nothing. When he spoke his voice broke on her name, as it had the night before when he had stood looking up at her windows. "Oh, Lydia!--Oh, my dear, I'm terribly afraid of your future!" "I'm a little scared of it myself," she said tremulously, and hid her face on his shoulder. She was the first to speak. "Wouldn't Marietta just scream with laughter at us?" she reminded him. "We _are_ foolish, too! There's nothing in the world you could lay your finger on. There's nothing anyhow, I guess, but nerves. I wouldn't dare breathe it to anybody else, but you always know how I'm feeling, anyhow. It's as though--here I am, grown up, and there's nothing for me to do that's worth while--even if--even if--Paul--" The doctor took a sudden resolution. "Why don't you talk to your father, Lydia? Why don't you ask him about--" He was cut short by Lydia's gesture of utter wonder. "_Father_? Don't you know that there's a big trial on? He couldn't tell without figuring up, if you should ask him quick, whether I'm fourteen or nineteen--or nine! Mother wouldn't let me, anyhow, even if he could have any idea of what I was driving at. She never let us bother him the least bit when there was something big happening in his lawyering. I remember that time I had pneumonia and nearly died, when I was a little girl, that she told him I had just a cold; and he never knew any different for years afterward, when I happened to say something about it. She didn't want him worried when he needed all his wits for some important business." The doctor looked at her with frowning intensity, and then down at his papers. He seemed on the point of some forcible utterance, which he restrained with many twitchings of his mouth. Finally he got up and went to a window, staring out silently. "I think I'll go and look up dear Aunt Julia," said Lydia. "Very well, my dear," said the doctor over his shoulder. "She's in her room, I think." In exactly the same mild tone, he added, "Damnation!" "What did you say?" asked Lydia.