in the eyes of others. He was the private
secretary of Senator Stollwaert at the time, a smug, discreet, pretty
man, of slender attainment and no great ambition. Happily, he had
afterwards removed to New York, or Washington would have been an
impossible place of residence for Elsie. She had met him once since her
return--he had had the courage to call upon her--and the familiar pose
of his small head and the mincing stride of his slender legs had given
her a feeling of nausea. "Is it possible that I once agonized over this
trig little man?" she asked herself.

To be just to him, Mr. Garretson did not presume in the least on his
previous intimacy; on the contrary, he seemed timid and ill at ease in
the presence of the woman whose beauty had by no means been foreshadowed
in her girlhood. He was not stupid; the splendor of her surroundings
awed him, but above all else there was a look on her face which too
plainly expressed contempt for her ancient folly. Her shame was as
perceptible to him as though expressed in spoken words, and his visit
was never repeated.

Of this affair Elsie had spoken quite freely to Lawson. "It only shows
what an unmitigated idiot a girl is. She is bound to love some one. I
knew quantities of nice boys, and why I should have selected poor Sammy
as the centre of all my hopes and affections I don't know. I dimly
recall thinking he had nice ears and hands, but even they do not now
seem a reasonable basis for wild passion, do they?"

Lawson had been amused. "Love at that age isn't a creature of reason."

"Evidently not, if mine was a sample."

"Ours now is so reasonable as to seem insecure and dangerous."

Her intimacy with Lawson, therefore, had begun on the plane of
good-fellowship while they were in Paris together, and for two years he
seemed quite satisfied. Of late he had been less contained.

After her outburst of anger at her father's ejectment of Curtis, she met
Lawson with a certain reserve not common to her. At the moment, she more
than half resolved that the time had come to leave her father's house
for Lawson's flat, and yet her will wavered. She said as little as
possible to him concerning that last disgraceful scene, as much on her
own account as to spare Curtis, but her restlessness was apparent to
Lawson and puzzled him. Two or three times during the summer he had
openly, though jocularly, alluded to their marriage, but she had put
him off with a keen word. Now that her father s