he flame, and our eyes met as I lit my cigar. Ned flushed
and laughed uneasily. "Poor Paul! Were you thinking of those execrable
weeds of his?--I wonder how I knew you were? Probably because I have
been wanting to talk to you of our plan--I sent Daisy off alone so that
we might have a quiet evening. Not that she isn't interested, only the
technical details bore her."

I hesitated. "Are there many technical details left to settle?"

Halidon pushed his armchair back from the fire-light, and twirled his
cigar between his fingers. "I didn't suppose there were till I began to
look into things a little more closely. You know I never had much of a
head for business, and it was chiefly with you that Paul used to go
over the figures."

"The figures--?"

"There it is, you see." He paused. "Have you any idea how much this
thing is going to cost?"

"Approximately, yes."

"And have you any idea how much we--how much Daisy's fortune amounts
to?"

"None whatever," I hastened to assert.

He looked relieved. "Well, we simply can't do it--and live."

"Live?"

"Paul didn't _live_," he said impatiently. "I can't ask a woman with
two children to think of--hang it, she's under no actual obligation--"
He rose and began to walk the floor. Presently he paused and halted in
front of me, defensively, as Paul had once done years before. "It's not
that I've lost the sense of _my_ obligation--it grows keener with the
growth of my happiness; but my position's a delicate one--"

"Ah, my dear fellow--"

"You _do_ see it? I knew you would." (Yes, he was duller!) "That's the
point. I can't strip my wife and children to carry out a plan--a plan
so nebulous that even its inventor.... The long and short of it is that
the whole scheme must be re-studied, reorganized. Paul lived in a world
of dreams."

I rose and tossed my cigar into the fire. "There were some things he
never dreamed of," I said.

Halidon rose too, facing me uneasily. "You mean--?"

"That _you_ would taunt him with not having spent that money."

He pulled himself up with darkening brows; then the muscles of his
forehead relaxed, a flush suffused it, and he held out his hand in
boyish penitence.

"I stand a good deal from you," he said.

He kept up his idea of going over the Academy question--threshing it
out once for all, as he expressed it; but my suggestion that we should
provisionally resuscitate the extinct board did not meet with his
approval.

"Not till the wh