any really useful occupation, when it comes to that; but I suppose I can
learn."

Again he surprised the lurking smile in the velvety eyes, but this time
it was half-mischievous.

"We have a college here in Wahaska, and you might get a place on the
faculty," she suggested; adding: "As an instructor in philosophy, for
example."

"Philosophy? that is the one thing in the world that I know least
about."

"In theory, perhaps," she conceded, laughing openly at him now. "But in
practice you are perfect, Mr. Griswold. Hasn't anybody ever told you
that before?"

"No; and you don't mean it. You are merely taking a base advantage of a
sick man and making fun of me. I don't mind: I'm in a heavenly temper
this afternoon."

"Oh, but I do mean it, honestly," she averred. "You are a philosopher,
really and truly, and I can prove it. Do you feel equal to another
little drive down-town?"

"Being a philosopher, I ought to be equal to anything," he postulated;
and he went up-stairs to get a street coat and his hat.

She had disappeared when he came down again, and he went out to sit on
the sun-warmed veranda while he waited. He had already forgotten what
she had said about the object of the drive--the proving of the
philosophic charge against him--and was looking forward with keenly
pleasurable anticipations to another outing with her, the second for
that day. It had come to this, now; to admitting frankly the charm which
he was still calling sensuous, and which, in the moments of insight
recurring, as often as they can be borne, to the imaginative, and
vouchsafed now and then even to the wayfaring, he was still disposed to
characterize as an appeal to that which was least worthy in him.

Latterly, however, he had begun to question himself more acutely as to
the exact justice of this attitude; and while he was sunning himself on
the veranda and listening for the hoof-beats of the big trap horse on
the stable approach, he was doing it again. In those graver analytical
moments he had called Margery a preternaturally clever little barbarian,
setting his own immense obligation to her aside in deference to what he
assumed to be the immutable realities. In the sun-warming excursion came
another of those precious moments of insight; a moment in which he was
given a sobering glimpse of the deathless Philistine within. Who was he
to be setting his machine-made ideals above the living, breathing, human
fact whose very limitations and sh