eas about the
bringing up of children. Another is that because of his own convenience
or circumstances, he does not care to own me as I am now. The third is
that because of my convenience or circumstances, he thinks that I may
not care to own him as he is now. I have never heard of or from him
since the letter I showed you, nearly nine months ago. I rather incline
to the opinion," he said, "that my father is dead."

"If he isn't," said Sharlee, gently, as the great car whizzed up and
stopped with a jerk, "I am very sure that you are to find him some day.
If he hadn't meant that, he would never have asked you to come all the
way from New York to settle here--do you think so?"

"Do you know," said Mr. Queed--so absorbedly as to leave her to clamber
up the car steps without assistance--"if I subscribed to the tenets of
your religion, I might believe that my father was merely a mythical
instrument of Providence--a tradition created out of air _just to bring
me down here_."

"Why," said Sharlee, looking down from the tall platform, as the car
whizzed and buzzed and slowly started, "aren't you _coming_?"

"No, I'm walking," said Mr. Queed, and remembered at the last moment to
pluck off his glistening new derby.

Thus they parted, almost precipitately, and, for all of him, might never
have met again in this world. Half a mile up the road, it came to the
young man that their farewell had lacked that final word of ceremony to
which he now aspired. To those who called at his office, to the men he
met at the sign of the Mercury, even to Nicolovius when he betook
himself from the lamp-lit sitting-room, it was his carefully attained
habit to say: "I hope to see you again soon." He meant the hope, with
these, only in the most general and perfunctory sense. Why, then, had he
omitted this civil tag and postscript in his parting with Miss Weyland,
to whom he could have said it--yes, certainly--with more than usual
sincerity? Certainly; he really did hope to see her again soon. For she
was an intelligent, sensible girl, and knew more about him than anybody
in the world except Tim Queed.

Gradually it was borne in upon him that the reason he had failed to tell
Miss Weyland that he hoped to see her again soon was exactly the fact
that he did hope to see her again soon. Off his guard for this reason,
he had fallen into a serious lapse. Looking with untrained eyes into the
future, he saw no way in which a man who had failed to tell a l