is feelings?" she continued hurriedly. "He
certainly has not said anything to her."

"That is his last hold on honor and reason. And to preserve that little
intact he wants to run away at once."

"But that would be very silly."

"Do you think so?" he said, looking at her fixedly.

"Why not?" she asked in her turn, but rather faintly.

"I'll tell you why," he said, lowering his voice with a certain
intensity of passion unlike his usual boyish lightheartedness. "Think of
a man whose life has been one of alternate hardness and aggression, of
savage disappointment and equally savage successes, who has known no
other relaxation than dissipation and extravagance; a man to whom
the idea of the domestic hearth and family ties only meant weakness,
effeminacy, or--worse; who had looked for loyalty and devotion only in
the man who battled for him at his right hand in danger, or shared his
privations and sufferings. Think of such a man, and imagine that an
accident has suddenly placed him in an atmosphere of purity, gentleness,
and peace, surrounded him by the refinements of a higher life than he
had ever known, and that he found himself as in a dream, on terms of
equality with a pure woman who had never known any other life, and yet
would understand and pity his. Imagine his loving her! Imagine that the
first effect of that love was to show him his own inferiority and the
immeasurable gulf that lay between his life and hers! Would he not fly
rather than brave the disgrace of her awakening to the truth? Would
he not fly rather than accept even the pity that might tempt her to a
sacrifice?"

"But--is Mr. Falkner all that?"

"Nothing of the kind, I assure you!" said he demurely. "But that's the
way a man in love feels."

"Really! Mr. Falkner should get you to plead his cause with Kate," said
Mrs. Hale with a faint laugh.

"I need all my persuasive powers in that way for myself," said Lee
boldly.

Mrs. Hale rose. "I think I hear Kate coming," she said. Nevertheless,
she did not move away. "It IS Kate coming," she added hurriedly,
stooping to pick up her work-basket, which had slipped with Lee's hand
from her own.

It was Kate, who at once flew to her sister's assistance, Lee deploring
from the sofa his own utter inability to aid her. "It's all my fault,
too," he said to Kate, but looking at Mrs. Hale. "It seems I have
a faculty of upsetting existing arrangements without the power of
improving them, or even putting them