persists; in a few instances I am quite certain it hasn't. I didn't like
the Gulf Coast at all, at first; it seemed so foreign and different and
unhomelike. As to people, however----"

She paused, and Griswold entered the breach hardily.

"As to people, you are less easily converted from the original
prejudice--or prepossession. So am I. I have learned to place the utmost
confidence in the first impression. In my own case it is invariably
correct, and if for any reason whatever I suffer any later
characterization to take its place, I am always the loser."

She was regarding him curiously over the big book which still lay open
between them.

"Is that a part of the writing gift?" she asked.

"No, not specially; most people have it in some more or less workable
quantity, though for many it expresses itself only in a vague attraction
or repulsion."

"I've had that feeling," she answered quickly.

"I know," he affirmed. "There have been times when, with every
reasonable fibre in you urging you to believe the evil, a still stronger
impulse has made you believe in the good."

"How can you know that?" she asked; and again he saw in the expressive
eyes the flying signals of indeterminate perplexity and apprehension.

Resolutely he pressed the hazardous experiment to its logical
conclusion. Once for all, he must know if this young woman with the
sympathetic voice and the goddess-like pose could, even under
suggestion, be led to link up the past with the present.

"It is my trade to know," he said quietly, closing the book of views and
laying it aside. "There have been moments in your life when you would
have given much to be able to decide a question of duty or expediency
entirely irrespective of your impressions. Isn't that so?"

For one flitting instant he thought he had gone too far. In the hardy
determination to win all or lose all, he had been holding her eyes
steadily, as the sure mirror in which he should be able to read his
sentence, of acquittal or of condemnation. This time there was no
mistaking the sudden widening of the pupils to betray the equally sudden
awakening of womanly terror.

"Don't be afraid," he began, and he had come thus far on the road to
open confession when he saw that she was not looking at him; she was
looking past him toward one of the windows giving upon the porch. "What
is it?" he demanded, turning to look with her.

"It was a man--he was looking in at the window!" she returned i