have been if he had not
been so pampered and petted and envied and spoiled, all because of his
father's money. His heart is right, and at the bottom he has the right
sort of stuff in him. His athletic record at school showed us that. I
think that was why we all liked him so in spite of his uselessness."

"I wish you could have known my father, Stan," said Helen thoughtfully,
as though she, too, were moved to speak by the wish that her mate might
know more of the things that had touched her deeper life.

"I wish so, too," he answered. "I know that he must have been fine."

"He was my ideal," she answered softly. "My other ideal, I mean. From
the time I was a slip of a girl he made me his chum. Until he died we
were always together. Mother died when I was a baby, you know. Many,
many times he would take me with him when he made his professional
visits to his patients, leaving me in the buggy to wait at each
house--'to be his hitching post'--he used to say. And on those long
rides, sometimes out into the country, he talked to me as I suppose not
many fathers talk to their daughters. And because he was my father and a
physician, and because we were so much alone in our companionship, I
believed him the wisest and best man in all the world, and felt that
nothing he said or did could be wrong. And so, you see, dear, my ideal
man, the man to whom I could give myself, came to be the kind of a man
that my father placed in the highest rank among men--a man like you,
Stan. And almost the last talk we had before he died father said to
me--I remember his very words--'My daughter, it will not be long now
until men will seek you, until someone will ask you to share his life.
Keep your ideal man safe in your heart of hearts, daughter, and remember
that no matter what a suitor may have to offer of wealth or social rank,
if he is not your ideal--if you cannot respect and admire him for his
character and manhood alone--say no; say no, child, at any cost. But
when your ideal man comes--the one who compels your respect and
admiration for his strength of character, and for the usefulness of his
life, the one whom you cannot help loving for his manhood alone--mate
with him--no matter how light his purse or how lowly his rank in the
world.' And so you see, as soon as I learned to know you, I realized
what you were to me. But I wish--oh, how I wish--that father could have
lived to know you, too."

For some time they watched the dancing camp