e should want anything as
much as Winifred wanted everything for which she cared at all, he
treated her enthusiasms with amused toleration, and made as much
effort to secure for her the successive desires of her heart as though
they had assumed the same importance in his own mind as in hers.

To-night he forced himself away from his own train of thought with an
effort, to throw himself into Winifred's evening experiences. He
watched her for some time as she sat in silence, with head bent
forward and gloved hands clasped about her knee.

"Well, little girl," he said at last, "you seem to have fallen into a
brown study. Was the dinner so dull?"

"No, Papa, not dull exactly; rather brilliant in some ways."

"I understand--brilliant materially, dull spiritually, like the
mantles those fellows wore in the Inferno--gilt on the outside, and
lead within. 'Oh, everlastingly fatiguing mantle!' I am gladder than
ever that I stayed at home."

"I am glad too, for I think you would have been bored, and when you
are bored you make no concealment of the fact."

"Of course not,--why should I? If I seemed to be having a good time, I
should be compelled to go through it again. No, society is organized
for people under twenty-five. They really enjoy it. For the rest of
the world it is a sham."

Winifred smiled absently.

"Who was there?" Professor Anstice asked at length, pushing away his
books as if bidding them a reluctant good-night.

"Oh, no one whom you know, I think, except Mr. Flint."

"Flint? Does he go to such things?"

"Yes, and appears to find them sufficiently entertaining, though I
fancy he must be decidedly over twenty-five. By the way," she added,
with an elaborately careless aside, "what do you think of Mr. Flint,
on the whole?"

"I think, for a clever man, he plays the worst game of whist I ever
saw."

"Yes, yes," admitted Winifred, with light mockery in her tone; "but
what do you think of him in lesser matters,--general character, for
instance?"

The Professor looked at his daughter with a little quizzical sadness
in his faded gray eyes. He began to perceive the drift of her banter.

"It would be difficult to state exactly what I think of him when you
put it so broadly as that," he answered. "Flint's character is
complex. He has in him the making of a fine man; but the question is,
will it ever be made? He seems to me abnormally lacking in personal
ambition,--does not seem to care whether he is heard o