ng everything in
dazzling, blinding truth. At least I so imagine."

Jacob Welse nodded his head with the slow meditation of one who
understands, yet stops to ponder and weigh again.

"But why have you asked, father? Why has Mr. St. Vincent been raised?
I have been friends with other men."

"But I have not felt about other men as I do of St. Vincent. We may be
truthful, you and I, and forgive the pain we give each other. My
opinion counts for no more than another's. Fallibility is the
commonest of curses. Nor can I explain why I feel as I do--I oppose
much in the way you expect to when your great white flash sears your
eyes. But, in a word, I do not like St. Vincent."

"A very common judgment of him among the men," Frona interposed, driven
irresistibly to the defensive.

"Such consensus of opinion only makes my position stronger," he
returned, but not disputatively. "Yet I must remember that I look upon
him as men look. His popularity with women must proceed from the fact
that women look differently than men, just as women do differ
physically and spiritually from men. It is deep, too deep for me to
explain. I but follow my nature and try to be just."

"But have you nothing more definite?" she asked, groping for better
comprehension of his attitude. "Can you not put into some sort of
coherence some one certain thing of the things you feel?"

"I hardly dare. Intuitions can rarely be expressed in terms of
thought. But let me try. We Welses have never known a coward. And
where cowardice is, nothing can endure. It is like building on sand,
or like a vile disease which rots and rots and we know not when it may
break forth."

"But it seems to me that Mr. St. Vincent is the last man in the world
with whom cowardice may be associated. I cannot conceive of him in
that light."

The distress in her face hurt him. "I know nothing against St.
Vincent. There is no evidence to show that he is anything but what he
appears. Still, I cannot help feeling it, in my fallible human way.
Yet there is one thing I have heard, a sordid pot-house brawl in the
Opera House. Mind you, Frona, I say nothing against the brawl or the
place,--men are men, but it is said that he did not act as a man ought
that night."

"But as you say, father, men are men. We would like to have them other
than they are, for the world surely would be better; but we must take
them as they are. Lucile--"

"No, no; you misunderstand. I d