re where women are
concerned," she returned, judicially. "A woman--a young woman--is
generally interested in hearing first of all a little about love and
devotion and loyalty, all unselfish and uncalculating. Now be patient!
Listen to me! A woman can detect real love. And real love seeks its
opportunity sweetly and shyly. It doesn't preface itself with remarks
about a woman's brain and advisory ability. I believe it has a lot to
say about eyes and hair and lips and such things. However, since you
admire me in my capacity as adviser, I'll advise you to be sure that you
love a woman before you propose to her, and then when you propose pick
out some place that's suitable for convincing her that you do love her.
I see mother yonder. Take me to her."

Turning away, flushed and angry, from her demure smile, he became
bitterly conscious that even had they been alone, under most favorable
circumstances, he would have lacked speech for real love-making. He felt
that conviction inwardly. He wondered whether he had the capacity for
loving as he had read of men loving. It made him a bit ashamed to think
of himself as violently protesting, hungrily pleading. A moment before
he had been angry because she doubted his love. He knew that he admired
her, respected, desired her. Now he argued with himself, and convinced
his soul that his emotions constituted love. And having convinced
himself, he determined to seek further opportunity of convincing her. It
was truly an academic way of settling matters so riotously impatient of
calculation as affairs of the heart, and his determination would have
appealed to Miss Presson's sense of the humorous more acutely still had
he undertaken to explain his emotions of that moment.

Thelismer Thornton, strolling amiably through the lobby throng, came and
put his hand on Harlan's shoulder.

"The best way to make good sugar is to simmer the sap slowly, my boy."
Harlan glanced sharply at him, but the Duke was not discussing love.
"Vard has got into the simmering stage at last. I reckoned he would.
He's too good a politician to boil the kettle over as he started in
doing. What's the matter with you? You look as though you'd been
listening to a funeral oration instead of an address that has put the
party back on Easy Street."

His grandson was careful not to explain the cause of his gloom. He was
willing to let politics be answerable.

Chairman Presson, more cheerful than he had been for weeks, came a