is gaze.

"Thank you," she said. "The honesty of that admission would have
counted a good deal in your favor had the thing been possible."

The man straightened himself and clenched one hand.

"Ah!" he said. "Then it's quite out of the question?"

Ida saw the blood rise into his face, and noticed the sudden hardness
in his eyes. Her answer evidently had hurt him more than she expected,
and she felt sorry for him. The man's quietness and control and the
absence of any dramatic protestation had a favorable effect on her,
and she was almost certain that she could have married him had she met
him a year earlier. In the meanwhile, however, she had met another
man, dressed in old blue duck, with hands hard and scarred; and the
well-groomed soldier became of less account as she recalled the man
she had left in the mountains. Then Kinnaird turned to her again.

"Can't you give me a chance?" he said. "If it's necessary, I'll wait;
and in the meanwhile I may do something worth while out yonder, if
that's any inducement."

"I'm very sorry," replied Ida. "I'm afraid it wouldn't be."

She looked him steadily in the eyes, and he had sense enough to
recognize that no words of his would move her. Though it was not an
easy matter, he retained his self-control.

"Well," he admitted, "it hurts, but I must bear it. And I want to say
that I'm glad in several ways that I met you." Then the blood crept
into his face again. "I should, at least, like you to think kindly of
me, and I'm rather afraid appearances are against me. Because that is
so, there's a thing that I should like you to understand. I'd have
been proud to marry you had you been a beggar."

"Thank you," said Ida, who saw that he meant it. "I'm more sorry than
ever, but the thing is--out of the question."

Kinnaird gravely held out his arm, but she intimated by a little sign
that she did not wish to go back with him, and in a moment the
curtains swung to behind him, and he had gone.

Ida became conscious that she was growing cold; but she sat quite
still for at least five minutes, thinking hard, and wondering why she
felt so sorry to give up Gregory Kinnaird. It was a somewhat
perplexing thing that one could be really fond of an eligible man and
yet shrink from marrying him, and there was no doubt whatever that the
one she had just sent away had in several respects a good deal to
offer her.

She admitted that London was, as she expressed it, getting hold of
her. She