es, boarding-school, finishing school,
debut--all concentrated into this happy year of being among gay, clever,
animated people."

"Yet you will not let me take you into a world which is still
pleasanter--"

And the eternal discussion immediately became inevitable, tiring both
with its earnestness and its utter absence of a common ground. Because
in him apparently remained every vital germ of convention and of
generations of training in every precept of formality; and in her--for
with Valerie West adolescence had arrived late--that mystery had been
responsible for far-reaching disturbances consequent on the starved
years of self-imprisonment, of exaltations suppressed, of fears and
doubts and vague desires and dreams ineffable possessing the silence of
a lonely soul.

And so, essentially solitary, inevitably lonely, out of her own young
heart and an untrained mind she was evolving a code of responsibility to
herself and to the world.

Her ethics and her morals were becoming what wide, desultory, and
unrestrained reading was making them; her passion for happiness and for
truth, her restless intelligence, were prematurely forming her
character. There was no one in authority to tell her--check, guide, or
direct her in the revolt from dogmatism, pedantry, sophistry and
conventionalism. And by this path youthful intelligence inevitably
passes, incredulous of snare and pitfall where lie the bones of many a
savant under magic blossoms nourished by creeds long dead.

"To bring no sorrow to any one, Louis--that is the way I am trying to
live," she said, seriously.

"You are bringing it to me."

"If that is so--then I had better depart as I came and leave you in
peace."

"It's too late."

"Perhaps it is not. Shall we try it?"

"Could _you_ recover?"

"I don't know. I am willing to try for your sake."

"Do you _want_ to?" he asked, almost angrily.

"I am not thinking of myself, Louis."

"I _want_ you to. I don't want you _not_ to think about yourself all the
time."

She made a hopeless gesture, opening her arms and turning her palms
outward:

"Kelly Neville! _What_ do you suppose loving you means to me?"

"Don't you think of yourself at all when you love me?"

"Why--I suppose I do--in a way. I know I'm fortunate, happy--I--" She
glanced up shyly--"I am glad that I am--loved--"

"You darling!"

She let him take her into his arms, suffered his caress, looking at him
in silence out of eyes as dark and c