plained with a little heat: "People can have a sickness
that AFFECTS their mind, can't they? Their mind can get some affected
without bein' LOST, can't it?"

"Then you mean the poor man's mind does seem affected?"

"Why, no; I'd scarcely go as far as that," Lohr said, inconsistently,
and declined to be more definite.

Adams devoted the latter part of that evening to the composition of his
letter--a disquieting task not completed when, at eleven o'clock, he
heard his daughter coming up the stairs. She was singing to herself in a
low, sweet voice, and Adams paused to listen incredulously, with his
pen lifted and his mouth open, as if he heard the strangest sound in the
world. Then he set down the pen upon a blotter, went to his door, and
opened it, looking out at her as she came.

"Well, dearie, you seem to be feeling pretty good," he said. "What you
been doing?"

"Just sitting out on the front steps, papa."

"All alone, I suppose."

"No. Mr. Russell called."

"Oh, he did?" Adams pretended to be surprised. "What all could you and
he find to talk about till this hour o' the night?"

She laughed gaily. "You don't know me, papa!"

"How's that?"

"You've never found out that I always do all the talking."

"Didn't you let him get a word in all evening?"

"Oh, yes; every now and then."

Adams took her hand and petted it. "Well, what did he say?"

Alice gave him a radiant look and kissed him. "Not what you think!" she
laughed; then slapped his cheek with saucy affection, pirouetted across
the narrow hall and into her own room, and curtsied to him as she closed
her door.

Adams went back to his writing with a lighter heart; for since Alice
was born she had been to him the apple of his eye, his own phrase in
thinking of her; and what he was doing now was for her.

He smiled as he picked up his pen to begin a new draft of the painful
letter; but presently he looked puzzled. After all, she could be happy
just as things were, it seemed. Then why had he taken what his wife
called "this new step," which he had so long resisted?

He could only sigh and wonder. "Life works out pretty peculiarly," he
thought; for he couldn't go back now, though the reason he couldn't was
not clearly apparent. He had to go ahead.

CHAPTER XVII

He was out in his taxicab again the next morning, and by noon he had
secured what he wanted.

It was curiously significant that he worked so quickly. All the years
during which his