ination. But it is doubly humiliating to find himself supplanted
by a little woolly dog, to see the caresses which he would claim as his
showered with ostentation on a diminutive animal. At that moment it
seemed that Blossom had supplanted me. He nestled in her arm, and when
for the tenth time I expressed my delight in having her home, she
turned from me and stroked the creature's silky back. Time and again
I, striving to do my duty, charged against the steel points of her
indifference. Even Mrs. Todd noticed my plight. As we were leaving
the carriage at the Broadway hotel whither Judge Bundy had led the way
she whispered to me that evidently three was a crowd, and acting on
that belief, she contrived to leave the two of us alone in the great
parlor of the hotel while the doctor and the Judge held a colloquy with
the clerk.

This Gladys Todd, sitting amid the faded grandeur of the hotel parlor,
this handsome mannish woman in a tweed suit, with a snappy dog in her
arm, was not the same girl beside whom I had sat ages ago, watching her
paint tulips and sprays of wisteria, not the same whose voice had
joined with mine in the sentimental strains of "Annie Laurie." But I
felt that I had a duty, and I sat down on the sofa and held out my hand
and in a voice of pleading asked her again if she was not glad to see
me.

"No, David," she said, turning her eyes downward to Blossom.

I was quite unprepared for such a frank admission, and it came like a
blow. In all my thought of Gladys Todd I had quite accustomed myself
to the confession that I did not look with pleasure to her home-coming,
but that she might regard me in the same light never occurred to me.
This knowledge was humiliating. I had been holding myself to the
strict line of duty and honor, but I had never suspected that she might
be impelled by exactly the same motives. Now I was hurt. As I sat
staring at her I cast about for the reason of the change. In my case
it was another woman, but a superlatively wonderful woman. In hers it
might be another man, a superlatively wonderful man. The idea was not
pleasant. In my case there was at least the excuse of old
acquaintance. In hers the change must have come in a single week at
sea, where miles of walking on the deck and hours leaning on the rail
with elbows close together might have revealed some kindred spirit.
There flashed to me her action in turning from me, the watcher on the
pier, to ex-Judge Bundy,