o tell me," she said. "Very well. Of course I
had no right to ask. I thought you'd like to let me know." She
sighed. "I wish men weren't so terribly reserved."

"And I wish," he retorted, "that women weren't so horribly imaginative."

But she had shut the door. She always went abruptly, never said good
night. He had told her, long ago, that those words broke up his
evening and made him think of bed instead of work.

To-night indeed, after her going, although he had said he must do some
writing, he sat quietly where he had been and gazed into the fire. He
was not, however, thinking about bed. He was wondering whether all
women were so crude and vulgar with their brothers. Ruth was the last
person who would ever have said that about Miss Hallam to anybody else.
Just because he chanced to write and say that he had met a jolly sort
of girl...!

It is a stale truism about good advice, that most natures must reject
it before they see their way to its acceptance. Self-pride demands
that it shall be their own idea.

Just as Hubert had scoffed at his friend's idea of loneliness, which
now indeed seemed such a ghastly spectre, so did he next work slowly
back to the very words of his sister that had angered him the most.

For by now his mental questioning had spread across a chasm dreaded for
long years and flaunted itself gaily in a narrow field.

The first step was so clear by now.

Of course he had sworn always that he would not marry, but that was
true of the past only. One changed every now and then.... He was at
the age when one grew lonely, when one naturally married. Sisters were
a big mistake. He could not endure year after year of silly quarrels
like the one just past. With a wife he would start fresh. She
wouldn't irritate him like Ruth: he wouldn't see through all her
motives; they need not fight for years.... Besides, he must find some
one less irritating, less selfish, than Ruth.... And as to Ruth, she
said herself that she was game to go. She probably preferred it. The
whole thing was her own suggestion.... Yes, she was right; they
certainly could not go on like this. Yet if she went--that loneliness
when he got old, was ill...! Kenneth had talked a lot of drivel but he
probably was right about stagnation. He found, himself, his work was
getting stale.... And then the help that she----

But who?

Hubert flung himself across the chasm, refusing doggedly to see it, and
found himse