ones. For our convictions will shackle us. The
difference is that then we shall be servants of Truth and
not of dead Tradition.--From the Note Book of a Dreamer.

THE CHAPERONE EXPLAINS THAT THE REBEL IS IMPOSSIBLE AND THE CHAPERONED
BEGS LEAVE TO DIFFER

Part 1

"And why mustn't I?" Alice demanded vigorously.

Her cousin regarded her with indolent amusement. "My dear, you are
positively the most energetic person I know. It is refreshing to see
with what interest you enter into a discussion."

Miss Frome, very erect and ready for argument, watched her steadily from
the piano stool of their joint sitting room. "Well?"

"I didn't say you mustn't, my dear. I know better than to deal in
imperatives with Miss Alice. What I did was mildly to suggest that you
are going rather far. It's all very well to be civil, but--" Mrs. Van
Tyle shrugged her shoulders and let it go at that. She was leaning back
in an easychair and across its arm her wrist hung. Between the fingers,
polished like old ivory to the tapering pink nails, was a lighted
cigarette.

"Why shouldn't I be--pleasant to him? I like him." Her color deepened,
but the eyes of the girl did not give way. There was in them a little
flare of defiance.

"Be pleasant to him if you like, and if it amuses you. But--" Again
Valencia stopped, but after a puff or two at her cigarette she added
presently: "Don't get too interested in him."

"I'm not likely to," Alice returned with a touch of scorn. "Can't I
like a man and admire him without wanting to marry him? I think that's a
hateful way to look at it."

"It's your interpretation, not mine," Mrs. Van Tyle answered with
perfect good humor. "Of course you couldn't want to marry him under
any circumstances. His station in life--his anarchistic ideas--his
reputation as a confirmed libertine--all of them make the thought of
such a thing impossible."

Miss Frome's mind seized on only one of the charges. "I don't believe
it. I don't believe a word of it. Anybody can throw mud--and some of it
is bound to stick. He's a good man. You can see that in his face."

"You can perhaps. I can't." Valencia studied her beneath a droop of
eyelids behind which she was very alert. "Those things aren't said about
a man unless they are true. Moreover, it happens we don't have to depend
on hearsay."

"What do you mean?"

"Do you remember that night we saw the Russian dancers?"

"Yes."

"On the way home our car passed him