ps, to gaze with me upon demolished
theories."

"I have taken my time in gazing upon them before now," he observed.

"Everybody is talking about your book," she said.

"Oh, no, only a very few people. But about your theories--which of them
has proved itself unable to bear the weight of experience?"

"You may remember I dwelt somewhat at length upon the indifference of
happy youth to the stings of outrageous fortune when supported by some
one else?"

"I remember. I regard it as the lesson for the day."

"It's early to mention it, but I am obliged to give you the evidence of
my error--honor demands it--and Alice will not mind, even if she sees
fit to contradict it to-morrow;" and she told him what had just been
told her.

He smiled as she concluded her statement, and she, meeting his glance in
all seriousness, broke down into a moment's laughter.

"'She does not know anything but that her side is beating,'" he quoted
meditatively.

"I thought my generosity in confession might at least forestall
sarcasm," she said severely.

"It ought to do so," he admitted.

There was a moment's pause.

"Has youth itself changed with the times, I wonder?" he speculated.
"Certainly you did not sympathize overmuch with defeat at Alice's age."

She did not answer, and she was looking away from him through the glass,
beyond which the darkness was pierced now and then by a shaft of
illumination. The pensiveness that had rested on her face, when he had
looked across the car at her, had deepened almost into sadness.

"And now," he went on, "you have called me successful--which shuts me
out from your more mature sympathy."

Still she did not answer. He bent a little nearer to her.

"Believe me, Katharine," he said, "my success is not so very
intoxicating after all. I need sympathy of a certain kind as much as I
did twenty years ago."

She glanced at him.

"Is that all you want?" she asked with a swift smile.

"No," he returned boldly; and she looked away again, out into the
darkness through which they were rushing.

"I had hoped," he went on, "that my so-called success might be something
to offer you after all this time--something you would care for--and now
I find that your ideals are all reversed. I have not won much, but I
have won a little, and you tell me to-day that it is only extreme youth
that cares for the winners."

"And that I have found out that I was mistaken." Her voice was low, but
quite clear. "Have I n