, yes, she asked me to dinner. She didn't look nearly so young, then,
and she's not exactly pretty; but, somehow, it didn't seem to matter.
She's got genius--you couldn't be with her ten minutes without finding
out that. I never saw any one in my life so much alive. When she's in a
room, even if she doesn't speak, you can't keep your eyes off her. She's
like a bright flame that you can't stop looking at--not even if there
are a lot of prettier women there, too."

"Is she dark or fair?"

He stopped to think for a moment.

"To save my life I can't remember--but I think she's dark--at least, her
eyes are, though her hair may be light. But you never think of her
appearance when she's talking. I believe she's the best talker I ever
heard--better even than father."

His enthusiasm had got the better of him, and it was evident that
Oliver's success had banished for a time at least the secret hostility
which had existed between father and son. That passion for material
results, which could not be separated from the Treadwell spirit without
robbing that spirit of its vitality, had gradually altered the family
attitude toward Oliver's profession. Art, like business, must justify
itself by its results, and to a commercial age there could be no
justifiable results that could not bear translation into figures.
Success was the chief end of man, and success could be measured only in
terms of money.

"There's your father's step," said Virginia, whose face looked drawn and
pallid in the dusk. "Let me light the lamp, darling. He hates to read
his paper by anything but lamplight."

But he had jumped up before she had finished and was hunting for matches
in the old place under the clock on the mantelpiece. She was such a
little, thin, frail creature that he laughed as she tried to help him.

"So Lucy is going to marry that old rotter, is she?" he asked pleasantly
as his father entered. "Well, father! I was just asking mother why she
let Lucy marry that old rotter?"

"But the dear child has set her heart on him, and he is really very nice
to us," replied Virginia hurriedly. Though she was disappointed in
Lucy's choice, it seemed dreadful to her to speak of a man who was about
to enter the family as a "rotter."

"You stop it, Harry, if you have the authority. I haven't," answered
Oliver carelessly. "Is your neuralgia better, Virginia?"

"It's quite gone, dear. Doctor Powell gave me some aspirin and it cured
it." She smiled gratef