us,
dawning fellowship in his own.

"You have me there," he repeated. "But I do know. I was happy enough
once, till--" He stopped.

"Things went wrong?" insinuated the Dragon-Fly, sitting down on her
heels in a childish attitude of attention.

"Yes," Merryon admitted, in his sullen fashion. "Things went wrong. I
found I was the son of a thief. He's dead now, thank Heaven. But he
dragged me under first. I've been at odds with life ever since."

"But a man can start again," said the Dragon-Fly, with her air of
worldly wisdom.

"Oh, yes, I did that." Merryon's smile was one of exceeding bitterness.
"I enlisted and went to South Africa. I hoped for death, and I won a
commission instead."

The girl's eyes shone with interest. "But that was luck!" she said.

"Oh, yes; it was luck of a sort--the damnable, unsatisfactory sort. I
entered the Indian Army, and I've got on. But socially I'm practically
an outcast. They're polite to me, but they leave me outside. The man who
rose from the ranks--the fellow with a shady past--fought shy of by the
women, just tolerated by the men, covertly despised by the
youngsters--that's the sort of person I am. It galled me once. I'm used
to it now."

Merryon's grim voice went into grimmer silence. He was staring sombrely
into the fire, almost as if he had forgotten his companion.

There fell a pause; then, "You poor dear!" said the Dragon-Fly,
sympathetically. "But I expect you are like that, you know. I expect
it's a bit your own fault."

He looked at her in surprise.

"No, I'm not meaning anything nasty," she assured him, with that quick
smile of hers whose sweetness he was just beginning to realize. "But
after a bad knockout like yours a man naturally looks for trouble. He
gets suspicious, and a snub or two does the rest. He isn't taking any
more. It's a pity you're not married. A woman would have known how to
hold her own, and a bit over--for you."

"I wouldn't ask any woman to share the life I lead," said Merryon, with
bitter emphasis. "Not that any woman would if I did. I'm not a ladies'
man."

She laughed for the first time, and he started at the sound, for it was
one of pure, girlish merriment.

"My! You are modest!" she said. "And yet you don't look it, somehow."
She turned her right-hand palm upwards on his knee, tacitly inviting
his. "You're a good one to talk of life being worth while, aren't you?"
she said.

He accepted the frank invitation, faintly smiling. "Wel