than I intended. I must go
now. When I come again I may perhaps have some plan to propose."

"Plan?" exclaimed Hallowell, his eyes lighting up.

"I'm not sure--not at all sure," hastily added Norman. "I don't wish to
give you false hopes. The matter is extremely difficult. But I'll try.
I've small hope of success, but I'll try."

"My daughter didn't explain to me," said the scientist. "She simply said
one of the gentlemen for whom she worked was coming to look at my place.
I thought it was mere curiosity."

"So it was, Mr. Hallowell," said Norman. "But I have been interested. I
don't as yet see what can be done. I'm only saying that I'll think it
over."

"I understand," said Hallowell. He was trying to seem calm and
indifferent. But his voice had the tremulous note of excitement in it
and his hands fumbled nervously, touching evidence of the agitated
gropings of his mind in the faint, perhaps illusory, light of a
new-sprung hope. "Yes, I understand perfectly. Still--it is pleasant to
think about such a thing, even if there's no chance of it. I am very
fond of dreaming. That has been my life, you know."

Norman colored, moved uneasily. The fineness of this man's character
made him uncomfortable. He could pity Hallowell as a misguided failure.
He could dilate himself as prosperous, successful, much the more
imposing and important figure in the contrast. Yet there was somehow a
point of view at which, if one looked carefully, his own sort of man
shriveled and the Hallowell sort towered.

"I _must_ be going," Norman said. "No--don't come with me. I know the way.
I've interrupted you long enough." And he put out his hand and, by those
little clevernesses of manner which he understood so well, made it
impossible for Hallowell to go with him to Dorothy.

He was glad when he shut the door between him and her father. He paused
in the hall to dispel the vague, self-debasing discomfort--and listening
to _her_ voice as she sang helped wonderfully. There is no more trying
test of a personality than to be estimated by the voice alone. That test
produces many strange and startling results. Again and again it
completely reverses our judgment of the personality, either destroys or
enhances its charm. The voice of this girl, floating out upon the quiet
of the cottage--the voice, soft and sweet, full of the virginal passion
of dreams unmarred by experience--It was while listening to her voice,
as he stood there in the dimly light