ute ignoring of any reason for withholding this
confidence from him at first staggered Gaston, and then steadied him.

Never before had Joyce so appealed to him, but the sacredness of the
position she had thrust upon him for a moment appalled him. He looked
intently at the girlish, innocent face. What he saw was a blind woman,
groping through the child, seeking a reality that evaded it.

Never greatly impressed with his own importance, Gaston became cruelly
aware, now, that in a marked way he still was the one being in the
girl's world to whom she looked for guidance. The knowledge made him
withdrawn for an instant.

Drew had appealed to her spirit--but he was elected Father Confessor,
Judge and General Arbiter of her daily life. For a moment Gaston's sense
of the ridiculous was stirred. Suppose they--those--people who
inhabited the Past, and peopled the possible Future--suppose they should
know of this? The eyes twinkled dangerously, but the girl in the glow of
the red fire was terribly in earnest.

"You are perfectly happy, Joyce?" It was an inane question, but like
some inane questions it touched a vital spark.

"Why, if I get on the top of the things that might make me unhappy if
they conquered me; and if I shut my ears and eyes--why, then, I guess
I'm perfectly happy. I won't _let_ myself feel sad any more, and I make
believe a lot--about Jude. You have to when you've been married long;
and I guess he has to about me. So you see, living that way it comes out
all right. And then when you have beautiful things, like this house, and
the books and pictures, and some one ready to help--like you--why
_those_ things I just hold up in the light all the time. Isn't _that_
being happy?"

"What a philosopher!" Gaston bent forward and again pressed the slim
shoulder. The piteousness of this young wife getting her happiness, all
unknowingly, by self-imposed blindness of the inner soul, clutched at
his heart.

"Hold hard to that, Joyce," he said. "Hold fast to that. Let all the
light in that you can upon your blessings, and as to other things, why,
don't acknowledge them! You're on the right track, though how you've
struck it so early in the game, beats me."

"Well," Joyce was all aglow, "Mr. Drew helped. He was so funny and
jolly. Just a big boy, but he had the queerest ideas about things. When
I think of him, sick and weak like he was, and yet living out all his
brave thoughts just as if he was a giant--why, sometimes