er love him as long as he and she were alike dependent upon Miss
Farringdon's bounty, and they had neither anything of their own? He
rejoiced that Alan Tremaine had failed to win her love; but he scorned
him as a fool for not having succeeded in doing so when he had the
chance. Had Christopher been master of the Moat House he felt he would
have managed things differently; for the most modest of men cherish a
profound contempt for the man who can not succeed in making a woman love
him when he sets about it.

"By Jove!" he said to himself, looking into the gray eyes that were so
full of sympathy just then, "what an ass the man was to talk to such a
woman as this about art and philosophy and high-falutin' of that sort!
If I had only the means to make her happy, I would talk to her about
herself and me until she was tired of the subject--and that wouldn't be
this side Doomsday. And she thinks that I am cold-hearted!" But what he
said to Elisabeth was, "There isn't much the matter with my
head--nothing for you to worry about, I can assure you. Let us talk
about something more interesting than my unworthy self--Tremaine, for
instance."

"I used to believe in Alan," Elisabeth confessed; "but I don't so much
now. I wonder if that is because he has left off making love to me, or
because I have seen that his ideas are so much in advance of his
actions."

"He never did make love to me, so I always had an inkling of the truth
that his sentiments were a little over his own head. As a matter of
fact, I believe I mentioned this conviction to you more than once; but
you invariably treated it with the scorn that it doubtless deserved."

"And yet you were right. It seems to me that you are always right,
Chris."

"No--not always; but more often than you are, perhaps," replied
Christopher, in rather a husky voice, but with a very kindly smile. "I
am older, you see, for one thing; and I have had a harder time of it for
another, and some of the idealism has been knocked out of me."

"But the nice thing about you is that though you always know when I am
wrong or foolish, you never seem to despise me for it."

Despise her? Christopher laughed at the word; and yet women were
supposed to have such keen perceptions.

"I don't care whether you are wise or foolish," he said, "as long as
you are you. That is all that matters to me."

"And you really think I am nice?"

"I don't see how you could well be nicer."

"Oh! you don't know what