t forty, it
means sharing its experiences with a friend. I'm going to speak of
something that has never passed my lips for nearly twenty years."

"You are very kind, Mr. Devant." Thornly set his glass down and thrust
his hands in his pockets. "I appreciate your friendliness, but please do
not give yourself pain. If life means anything under forty, it means
getting your knocks at first hand." He tried to smile pleasantly, but
his face fell at once into gloomy, set lines.

"I'm afraid," Mr. Devant went on, keeping his eyes upon his companion's
face and guiding himself thereby, "I'm afraid some Quixotic idea of
defending this little pimpernel of ours moves you to take this step.
Believe me, nothing you can do in that direction--unless indeed you have
gone too far already--can avail, if you seek the girl's happiness."

A deep flush rose to Thornly's cheeks, but the proud uplift of the head
renewed hope in the older man's heart.

"You say," he continued, toying with his glass, "that to drag Katharine
from her world would be ruinous to her; to drag this child of the dunes
from her world would be--to put it none too harshly--hell! I've looked
the girl's antecedents up since that day on the Hills. I've had my bad
moments, I can assure you. It's like trying to draw water out of an
empty well to get anything against their own from these people down
here; but I had hopes of the girl's mother. I pin my faith to ancestry,
and I am willing to build on a very small foundation, providing the soil
is good. But the mother in no wise accounts for the daughter. She was a
simple, uneducated woman, with rather an unpleasant way of shunning her
kind. James B. Smith, my gardener, permitted me to wring this from him.
He doesn't fancy Captain Billy Morgan, thinks him rather a saphead. He
hinted at a necessity for the marriage of this same Billy and the girl's
mother. It's about the one sin the Quintonites know as a sin. They come
as near going back upon each other for that transgression as they ever
come to anything definite. The girl is the offspring of a stupid
surf-man and a nondescript sort of woman. She is not the product of any
known better stock; she is, well, a freak of nature! You cannot
transplant that kind of flower, Dick. The roots are hid in shallow soil
of a peculiar kind. If you planted her in, well, in even your artistic
world, she would either die, shrivel up, and be finished, or she might
spread her roots, and finish you! I'