ix good nuts inside me, I feel like I could run
through a troop, as the psalmist says, and leap over a wall."

Susan's admiring murmur indicated that the sustaining effect of the
diet Joel recommended was due less to its intrinsic virtue than to some
unusual and dominating quality of Joel's personality. And Joel,
struggling with a peculiarly tough Brazil nut, reflected that Susan
Fitzgerald was an intelligent woman as well as an agreeable one.

The morning passed pleasantly for both. Susan possessed the gift which
men have ever highly esteemed in the sex, the faculty of continued
silence, combined with close attention. Some of Joel's theories
impressed her as startling, but like many very proper people, Susan
rather enjoyed being shocked, if the sensation was not overdone.
Whether she murmured approval or blushed in decorous protest, it was
plain that she found Joel's monologues immensely interesting. She
could hardly believe her ears when the clock struck twelve.

Susan brought the nuts and apples out again after their brief period of
retirement, and seated herself at the table, to share the Eden-like
repast. "You'd be an awful easy man to cook for, Mr. Dale," she said,
with a glance which in another woman would have been coquettish.

But the arrow glanced harmless. Joel's mood was abstracted. Not for
some time had he put into practise his theories regarding uncooked
food, and his rebellious appetite craved more stimulating fare. He
munched his nuts with distracting memories of yesterday's pot roast.
He found himself resenting Susan's eager compliance. She should have
insisted on preparing him a good meal--good from her standpoint--and as
a gentleman he could have done no less than show his appreciation by
eating it.

For once Joel had lost interest in his own eloquence. Inward voices
were protesting against this return to the fare which had satisfied
Father Adam. When he retired to the armchair, after dinner, and
relapsed into a sulky silence, Susan remembered that the obligation to
amuse him was also nominated in the bond. Luckily his tastes were
literary, which rendered her task a simple one.

Susan stepped into the tightly-closed, partially darkened parlor which
never in the sultriest weather seemed wholly to lose the chill of its
unwarmed winter days. The center of the room was occupied by a square
table, on each corner of which lay a book, the four arranged with
geometrical nicety. Susan was t