-as everybody else does. I fancy it's just
that. What do you think?"

"Oh, I?" said the man. "I--how should I know? I know it's a great
privilege to be allowed to see him--such a man as that. And I know we
get on wonderfully well. He doesn't condescend, as most old men do who
have led important lives. We just talk as two men in a club might talk,
and I tell him stories and make him laugh. Oh yes, we get on wonderfully
well."

"Oh," said she, "I've often wondered what you talk about. What did you
talk about to-day?"

Ste. Marie turned abruptly away from her and went across to one of the
windows--the window where she had stood earlier, looking out upon the
dingy garden. She saw him stand there, with his back turned, the head a
little bent, the hands twisting together behind him, and a sudden fit of
nervous shivering wrung her. Every woman knows when a certain thing is
going to be said to her, and usually she is prepared for it, though
usually, also, she says she is not. Miss Benham knew what was coming
now, and she was frightened, not of Ste. Marie, but of herself. It meant
so very much to her--more than to most women at such a time. It meant,
if she said yes to him, the surrender of almost all the things she had
cared for and hoped for. It meant the giving up of that career which old
David Stewart had dwelt upon a month ago.

Ste. Marie turned back into the room. He came a little way toward where
the girl sat, and halted, and she could see that he was very pale. A
sort of critical second self noticed that he was pale and was surprised,
because, although men's faces often turn red, they seldom turn
noticeably pale except in very great nervous crises--or in works of
fiction; while women, on the contrary, may turn red and white twenty
times a day, and no harm done. He raised his hands a little way from his
sides in the beginning of a gesture, but they dropped again as if there
was no strength in them.

"I told him," said Ste. Marie, in a flat voice--"I told your grandfather
that I--loved you more than anything in this world or in the next. I
told him that my love for you had made another being of me--a new being.
I told him that I wanted to come to you and to kneel at your feet, and
to ask you if you could give me just a little, little hope--something to
live for, a light to climb toward. That is what we talked about, your
grandfather and I."

"Ste. Marie! Ste. Marie!" said the girl, in a half whisper. "What did my