e brushes and palette, and walked slowly to
the window.

It was snowing again. He could hear the feathery whisper of the flakes
falling on the glass roof above; and he remembered the night of the new
year, and all that it had brought to him--all the wonder and happiness
and perplexity of a future utterly unsuspected, undreamed of.

And now it was into that future he was staring with a fixed and blank
gaze as his sister's hand fell upon his shoulder and her cheek rested a
moment in caress against his.

"Dearest child," she said tremulously, "I did not mean to speak harshly
or without sympathy. But, after all, shouldn't a son consider his father
and mother in a matter of this kind?"

"I have considered them--tried to."

Mrs. Collis dropped into an arm-chair. After a few moments he also
seated himself listlessly, and sat gazing at nothing out of absent eyes.

She said: "You know what father and mother are. Even I have something
left of their old-fashioned conservatism clinging to me--and yet people
consider me extremely liberal in my views. But all my liberality, all my
modern education since I left the dear old absurdities of our narrow
childhood and youth, can not reconcile me to what you threaten us
with--with what you are threatened--you, your entire future life."

"What seems to threaten you--and them--is my marriage to the woman with
whom I'm in love. Does that shock you?"

"The circumstances shock me."

"I could not control the circumstances."

"You can control yourself, Louis."

"Yes--I can do that. I can break her heart and mine."

"Hearts don't break, Louis. And is anybody to live life through exempt
from suffering? If your unhappiness comes early in life to you it will
pass the sooner, leaving the future tranquil for you, and you ready for
it, unperplexed--made cleaner, purer, braver by a sorrow that came, as
comes all sorrow--and that has gone its way, like all sorrows, leaving
you the better and the worthier."

"How is it to leave _her_?"

He spoke so naturally, so simply, that for the moment his sister did not
recognise in him what had never before been there to recognise--the
thought of another before himself. Afterward she remembered it.

She said quietly: "If Valerie West is a girl really sincere and meriting
your respect, she will face this matter as you face it."

"Yes--she would do that," he said, thoughtfully.

"Then I think that the sooner you explain matters to her--"

He laughe