eart.

"Hel-LO!" he cried, starting up. "I AM glad to see you."

"I'm mighty glad to be back," said she, lapsing with keen pleasure into
her native dialect.

He took both her hands and shook them cordially, then looked at her
from head to foot admiringly. "The latest from the Rue de la Paix, I
suppose?" said he.

They seated themselves with the table between them. She, under cover
of commonplaces about her travels, examined him with the utmost
calmness. She saw every point wherein he fell short of the men of her
class--the sort of men she ought to like and admire. But, oh, how dull
and stale and narrow and petty they were, beside this man. She knew
now why she had fled. She didn't want to love Victor Dorn, or to marry
him--or his sort of man. But he, his intense aliveness, his keen,
supple mind, had spoiled her for those others. One of them she could
not marry. "I should go mad with boredom. One can no more live
intimately with fashion than one can eat gold and drink diamonds. And,
oh, but I am hungry and thirsty!"

"So you've had a good time?" he was saying.

"Superb," replied she. "Such scenery--such variety of people. I love
Europe. But--I'm glad to be home again."

"I don't see how you can stand it," said Victor.

"Why?" inquired she in surprise.

"Unless I had an intense personal interest in the most active kind of
life in a place like this, I should either fly or take to drink,"
replied he. "In this world you've either got to invent occupation for
yourself or else keep where amusements and distractions are thrust at
you from rising till bed-time. And no amusements are thrust at you in
Remsen City."

"But I've been trying the life of being amused," said Jane, "and I've
got enough."

"For the moment," said Victor, laughing. "You'll go back. You've got
to. What else is there for you?"

Her eyes abruptly became serious. "That's what I've come home to find
out," said she. Hesitatingly, "That's why I've come here to-day."

He became curiously quiet--stared at the writing before him on the
table. After a while he said:

"Jane, I was entirely too glad to see you to-day. I had----"

"Don't say that," she pleaded. "Victor, it isn't a weakness----"

His hand resting upon the table clenched into a fist and his brows drew
down. "There can be no question but that it is a weakness and a
folly," he pushed on. "I will not spoil your life and mine. You are
not for me, and I am not for y