alk too much about their affairs. If, as we think, she has been
brought up in circumstances very different from these we find her in, it
isn't strange that she doesn't want to tell us all about the change."

But his patient continued to moan, and he could give her no consolation.
For a time he sat quietly beside the couch where lay the long and
slender form, and he was thinking things over. The room was veiled in a
half twilight, partly the effect of closing day and partly that of drawn
shades. The deep and sobbing breaths continued until suddenly Burns's
hand was laid firmly upon the hand which clutched a handkerchief wet
with many tears. He spoke now in a new tone, one she had never before
heard from him addressed to herself:

"This," he said, "isn't worthy of you, my friend."

It was as if her breath were temporarily suspended while she listened.
People were not accustomed to tell Mrs. Alexander King that her course
of action was unworthy of her.

"No man or woman has a right to dictate to another what he shall do,
provided the thing contemplated is not an offense against another. You
have no right to set your will against your son's when it is a matter
of his life's happiness."

She seized on this last phrase. "But that's why I do oppose him. I want
him to be happy--heaven knows I do! He can't be happy--this way."

"How do you know that? You don't know it. You are just as likely to make
him bitterly unhappy by opposing him as by letting him alone. And I can
tell you one thing surely, Mrs. King: Jordan will do as he wishes in
spite of you, and all you will gain by opposition will be not a gain,
but a sacrifice--of his love."

She shivered. "How can you think he will be so selfish?"

Burns had some ado to keep his rising temper down. "Selfish--to marry
the woman he wants instead of the woman you want? That's an old, old
argument of selfish mothers."

The figure on the couch stiffened. "Doctor Burns! How can you speak so,
when all I ask for is my son's best good?" The words ended in a wail.

"You think you do, dear lady. What you really want is--your own way."

Suddenly she sat up, staring at him. His clear gaze met her clouded one,
his sane glance confronted her wild one. She lifted her shaking hand
with a gesture of dismissal. But there was a new experience in store
for Jordan King's mother.

Burns leaned forward, and took the delicate hand of his hysterical
patient in his own.

"No, no," he said, smil