gh still to
have youth's delusions about women. You'll learn that they're human, that
it's from them we men inherit our weaknesses. However, let's assume that
she won't take it: _Why_ won't she take your money? What is there
about it that repels Ellersly's daughter, brought up in the sewers of
fashionable New York--the sewers, sir!"

"She does not love me," I answered.

"I have hurt you," he said quickly, in great distress at having compelled
me to expose my secret wound.

"The wound does not ache the worse," said I, "for my showing it--to
_you_." And that was the truth. I looked over toward Dawn Hill whose
towers could just be seen. "We live there." I pointed. "She is--like a
guest in my house."

When I glanced at him again, his face betrayed a feeling of which I doubt
if any one had thought him capable in many a year. "I see that you love
her," he said, gently as a mother.

"Yes," I replied. And presently I went on: "The idea of any one I love
being dependent on me in a sordid way is most distasteful to me. And since
she does not love me, does not even like me, it is doubly necessary that
she be independent."

"I confess I do not quite follow you" said he.

"How can she accept anything from me? If she should finally be compelled by
necessity to do it, what hope could I have of her ever feeling toward me as
a wife should feel toward her husband?"

At this explanation of mine his eyes sparkled with anger--and I could not
but suspect that he had at one time in his life been faced with a problem
like mine, and had settled it the other way. My suspicion was not weakened
when he went on to say:

"Boyish motives again! They show you do not know women. Don't be deceived
by their delicate exterior, by their pretenses of super-refinement. They
affect to be what passion deludes us into thinking them. But they're clay,
sir, just clay, and far less sensitive than we men. Don't you see, young
man, that by making her independent you're throwing away your best chance
of winning her? Women are like dogs--like dogs, sir! They lick the hand
that feeds 'em--lick it, and like it."

"Possibly," said I, with no disposition to combat views based on I knew not
what painful experience. "But I don't care for that sort of liking--from a
woman, or from a dog."

"It's the only kind you'll get," retorted he, trying to control his
agitation. "I'm an old man. I know human nature--that's why I live alone.
You'll take that kind of liking,