to help Owen with his
articles," she said, smiling happily, reassured by his friendly counsel.
"Of course they were quite right--I _am_ stupid and ignorant, but if I
work hard I think I ought to be able to make myself useful to Owen,
oughtn't I, Mr. Herrick?"

"Don't work too hard," he said, half jesting, half in earnest. "You
don't want to turn yourself into a blue-stocking, do you? Don't
over-develop your brain at the expense of your heart and soul, as so
many learned women have done--to their ultimate despair."

"There's no fear of that." Toni spoke in a low voice, and again he
caught a glimpse of something disconcerting in her clear eyes. "Those
women said I _had_ no soul. But that's nonsense, because everyone has a
soul."

"But not everyone realizes it," he said. "Some people go through life
and never know they have more than a body, which claims attention while
the soul waits, yearningly, for recognition."

He had spoken half to himself, his thoughts wandering for a moment from
the girl beside him to another girl whose soul had been, to him at
least, as a sealed book.

"I have been like that," said Toni surprisingly. "But I have a soul--and
for Owen's sake I am going to prove it. Only"--she faltered find her
brave accents died away--"perhaps it is too late, after all."

* * * * *

And though, when he left her at her own door, refusing her invitation to
enter, she had regained much of her usual manner, her last words haunted
Herrick all through the long, lonely evening.

He knew quite well that there was a good deal of truth in the accusation
brought against the shrinking Toni. Although he lived a solitary life,
it was impossible altogether to avoid contact with one's neighbours
along the river; and he had heard sundry bits of conversation concerning
Toni which went to prove that Owen Rose's choice of a wife was freely
criticized in the neighbourhood. People agreed that she was certainly
surprisingly pretty, but she did not belong to the class which filled
all the big houses round about. The charitable said she was shy, the
malicious called her _gauche_, without perhaps knowing exactly what they
meant; and everyone who had talked to her asserted that she had no
conversation, and did not appear in the least a suitable wife for a
clever man like Mr. Rose.

"Poor little girl!" Herrick rose from his seat with a sigh at the end of
the long, dreary evening. "I'm sorry for her--l