g his movements.

"Is that the way you sign legal papers, Corrie, without reading them?"

The blue eyes gave the questioner one expressive glance.

"You gave it to me," was the answer.

Gerard contemplated him, then drew another printed sheet from a pile on
the desk and pushed it across.

"All right. I want you to sign this, too," he signified.

As carelessly as before, Corrie set down his signature and turned away
from the half-folded page.

"I came back early because I had a letter from Flavia," he explained. "I
wanted to answer it right away. She says that father doesn't intend to
come home until autumn. I don't believe she likes it much, but of course
she wouldn't tell him so. He has enough to stand."

Gerard drew the two papers towards him and put them into a drawer. It is
hard to be consistent; the temptation of seeing Corrie read Flavia's
weekly letters had long since vanquished the resolution of the man whose
love for her seemed to himself to illustrate that the economies of
Nature do not include human passion. Corrie found a willing, if mute,
listener to all confidences in regard to his sister.

"She has never told Mr. Rose that you are with me?" Gerard asked,
to-day.

"No," he responded, surprised. "Oh no! She promised me that, the night
before I left home."

"Yet, living so close in thought with your father as she does, I should
have fancied----"

"That she couldn't help telling him? I don't know who started that story
that women can't keep secrets." Corrie laughed mirthlessly. "From what I
have seen, they can keep quiet a secret that would tear itself out of
any man I ever met, if the wrench killed him."

He unclasped the heavy fur coat he still wore and pushed it aside from
his throat with an impatient air of oppression.

"But Flavia could not hurt anyone, and she knows that would hurt me," he
added, more gently.

Flavia could not hurt anyone. Allan Gerard considered that statement,
not so much in bitterness as in a wonder that made all life uncertain.
He recalled the fountain arcade of rose-colored columns and delicate
lights, the sweetly demure girl who waited there for her brother, and
her last brief glance of virginal candor and innocently unconscious
confession. Flavia could not hurt anyone. Yet she had dismissed the man
who loved her, without even granting him the poor alms of courteous
sympathy, had left him to learn her decision from her silence. Long
since, he had decided that he