crept into the dingy office of "The Opp Eagle," the editor was
watching for it. He was waiting to welcome the day that would bring back
Guinevere. As Hope with blindfold eyes bends over her harp and listens
to the faint music of her one unbroken string, so Mr. Opp, with bandaged
head, bent over his damaged horn and plaintively evoked the only note
that was left therein.

XIV

Those who have pursued the coy goddess of happiness through the mazes of
the labyrinth of life, know well how she invites her victim on from
point to point, only to evade capture at the end. Mr. Opp rose with each
summer dawn, radiant, confident, and expectant, and each night he sat in
his window with his knees hunched, and his brows drawn, and wrestled
with that old white-faced fear.

Two marauders were harassing the editor these days, dogging his
footsteps, and snapping at him from ambush. One was the wolf that howls
at the door, and the other was the monster whose eyes are green.

Since the halcyon days that had wafted Miss Guinevere Gusty back to the
shore of the Cove, Mr. Opp had not passed a serene hour out of her
presence. His disposition, though impervious to the repeated shafts of
unkind fortune, was not proof against the corrosive effect of jealousy.

If he could have regarded Willard Hinton in the light of a hated rival,
and met him in fair and open fight, the situation would have been
simplified. But Hinton was the friend of his bosom, the man who, he had
declared to the town, "possessed the grandest intelligence he had ever
encountered in a human mind." He admired him, he respected him, and, in
direct contradiction to the emotion that was consuming him, he trusted
him.

Concerning Miss Guinevere Gusty's state of mind, Mr. Opp permitted
himself only one opinion. He fiercely denied that she was absent-minded
and listless when alone with him; he refused to believe his own eyes
when he saw a light in her face when she looked at Hinton that was
never there for him. He preferred to exaggerate to himself her
sweetness, her gentleness, her loyalty, demanding nothing, and
continuing to give all.

His entire future happiness, he assured himself, hung upon the one
question of little Miss Kippy. For four months the problem had been a
matter for daily, prayerful consideration, but he was still in the dark.

When he was with Guinevere the solution seemed easy. In explaining away
the difficulties to her, he explained them away to him