your work and I am no mind reader."

"I had made up my mind not to speak first. But I broke my
determination." The noisy little clock made itself prominent during the
next half minute and then Bauer, to Helen's surprise, actually led off
with a question.

"Would you tell me what you are making?"

Helen held up her work. "It's a sofa pillow cover. I'm making it for
Walter."

Bauer looked at it gravely. Helen would not have been surprised if any
one of a dozen of her men friends had said, "I'd give anything for one
like it."

But Bauer simply said, "It's beautiful. Walter is fortunate."

"We are all grateful for your friendship with Walter. It's meant a great
deal to him," said Helen with a burst of frankness.

"His means everything to me. I can't tell you all it means."

Another period was marked by the demonstrative clock and then suddenly
Helen said, "Mr. Bauer, I wish you would tell me something about your
folks, and your home."

The simple question smote Bauer like a blow in his face. Instantly he
said to himself, "Walter has not told the family about me, about the
disgrace, about the ruined home." And at first he felt hurt that Walter
had not put the family on their guard. It was not fair to expose him to
such questions. How could a girl like Helen Douglas possibly be made a
sharer in his tragedy? His father had been a small diplomat at
Washington. His mother a high spirited American girl whose ambition had
suddenly terminated on the eve of her husband's promotion to a higher
post of responsibility, through a scandal that involved both her husband
and herself. Both of them were in the wrong, and nothing but unusual
effort on the part of those interested had kept the affair out of the
papers, at least to a great extent, and besides, the numerous accounts
of such home tragedies lessened the emphasis placed on this one, so that
Bauer knew that the Douglas family, outside of the editor himself and
Walter, were not associating him with an event which left him alone in
the world to bear a disgrace that seemed at times to overwhelm him.

But while Felix Bauer was simple hearted and clear souled as day
himself, he did possess to a remarkable degree the power of
self-possession and self-restraint. His soul had already to a certain
degree learned the sad lesson of bearing disaster with calm inward
poise. Whatever the tragedy might mean to him in the future, he was not
so poor spirited as to let it ruin his own de