of Mrs. Lenox, and Norris was left to follow in outer
darkness.

When bedtime came, Norris detained Percival.

"Come out for a smoke and a turn," he said. "The night is frosty, and
you'll sleep all the better for a sniff of fresh air."

"What are you so glum about?" he asked, as Dick tramped in silence.

He was moody and enraged himself, but too proud to let his anger be
seen.

"Not mad, most noble Norris, only thinking."

"Unfold your thoughts."

"I was thinking about Madeline," answered Dick, and Norris' heart
thumped, for he too was thinking about Madeline. "I wonder if the kind
of training that she and all girls of her class get is the thing, after
all. I'm not talking about knowledge, you understand. I'm not such a cad
as to grudge a girl the best there is in the world. But there's
something else. It's the electric feminine, I suppose, that makes them
the powers behind every throne. Fate is always represented in
petticoats, you know. It sometimes seems as though the better-trained
girls had all that side of them kept out of sight and polished into
nothingness. Why are they taught to ignore the biggest power that's in
them? Why, even that untrained little Miss Quincy is vivid with some
sex-fascination that the more fortunate girls do not often have."

"Oh, she is only a colored light. The sunlight has all other colors
latent in itself. How do you dare to make any comparison between Miss
Quincy and your lovely Miss Elton?"

"Great Scott! Don't say 'my Miss Elton'!" Dick exclaimed. "Madeline
doesn't belong to me." And he added politely, "Worse luck! She and I
have always been like brother and sister. That's all there is to it."

"Are you sure?" demanded Ellery, with hot thrusts of mingled anguish and
exultation stabbing through his bosom.

"Sure!" said Dick equably. "Why, even if I loved her, my dear fellow, I
should know, from her unruffled serenity, that there was no hope for me.
But Madeline isn't a very emotional creature, Ellery. She has too much
brains for that,--a girl to cheer but not inebriate."

"I don't want a girl to make me drunk," ejaculated Norris.

"Well, I do," rejoined Dick.

"And though Miss Elton's emotions do not lie on the surface, I'll
warrant they are there," Ellery went on as though letting off pent-up
steam. "They are like her voice--like all her motions--neither loud nor
faint, but exquisitely modulated. She seems to me like the embodiment of
innocence,--not the innocence of