fully, "and always seem to be
doing for others. No one will ever forget how you offered to stand by
the women of Grande Mignon while the men went fishing."

Again Elsa blushed, but this time the color came from a different
source. Little did he know that her philanthropy was all a part of the
same plan--to win his favor.

"And the things I know you must have done for my mother," he went on.
"Those are the things that I appreciate more than any. It is not every
woman who would even think of them, let alone do them."

Why would he force her into this attitude of perpetual lying?
she thought. It was becoming worse and worse. Why was he so
straightforward and so blind? Could he not see that she loved
him? Was he one of those cold and passionless men upon whom no
woman ever exerts an intense influence?

Though she did not know it, she expressed the whole fault in her
system. A man reared in a more complex community than a fishing
village would have divined her scheme, and the result would have been
a prolonged but most delightful duel of wits and hearts.

But Code, by the very directness of his honesty, and simplicity of
his nature, cut through the gauzy wrappings of this delectable package
and went straight to its heart. And there he found nothing, because
what little of the deeply genuine there lay in this woman's restless
nature was disguised and shifted at the will of her caprice.

When Code had experienced the pleasure of lighting a genuine clear
Havana cigar after many months of abstinence, she leaned across the
table to him, her hands clasped before her.

"Code, what does loneliness represent to you?" she asked.

"Oh, I don't know," he temporized, taken aback. "I don't go in for
loneliness much; but when I do, why all I want is--well, let me see, a
good game of quoits with the boys in front of the church, or a talk
with my mother about how rich we are going to be some day when I get
that partnership in the fishstand. I'm too busy to be lonely."

"And I'm too lonely to be busy!" He looked at her unbelievingly.

"You!" he cried. "Why, you have everything in the world; you can go
anywhere, do anything, have the people about you that you want. You,
lonely? I don't understand you."

"Well, I'll put it another way. Did you ever want something so hard
that it hurt, and couldn't get it?"

"Yes, I wanted my father back after he died," said Code simply.

"And I wanted Jim after he died," added Elsa. "Those things