rather wild oats in my youth,
and waked in middle age to the knowledge that my materialism had led me
astray. So I married an idealist. I wanted my children to have a
spiritual background of character such as I have not possessed. And the
result of that marriage is--Marie-Louise! If she has a soul it is yet to
be discovered."

"She is young. Give her time."

"I have been giving her time for eighteen years. I have wanted to see her
mother in her, to see some gleam of that exquisite fineness. There are
things we men, the most material of us, want in our women, and I want it
in Marie-Louise. But she gives back what I have given her--nothing more.
And I don't know what to do with her."

"Her mother?" Richard hinted.

"Julie is worn out with trying to meet a nature so unlike her own. Our
love for each other has made us understand. But neither of us understands
Marie-Louise. I sent her away to school, but she wouldn't stay. She likes
her home and she hates rules. She loves animals, and if she were a boy
she would practice medicine. Being a woman and having no outlet for her
energies, she is freakish. You saw the way she was dressed at dinner."

"I liked it," Richard said; "all that dead silver with her red hair."

"But it is too--sophisticated, for a young girl. Why, man, she ought to
be in white frocks and pearls, and putting cushions behind her mother's
back."

"You say that because her mother wore white and pearls, and put
cushions behind _her_ mother's back. There aren't many of the
white-frocks-and-pearls kind left. It's a new generation. Perhaps dead
silver with red hair is an expression of it. And it is we who don't
understand."

"Perhaps. But it's a problem." Austin rose. "If you'll excuse me, Brooks,
I'll go to my wife. We always read together on Sunday nights."

He sent Marie-Louise out to Richard. She came through the starlight, a
shining figure in her silver dress, with a silver Persian kitten hugged
up in her arms. She sat on the sun-dial and swung her jade bracelet for
the kitten to play with.

"Dad and mother are reading the Bible. He doesn't believe in it, and she
gets him to listen once a week. And then she reads the prayers for the
day. When I was a little girl I had to listen--but never again!"

"Why not?"

"Why should I listen to things that I don't believe? To-night it is the
ten virgins and their lamps. And Dad's pretending that he's interested. I
am writing a play about it, but mother doe