ng--with your money, I mean!"

"No, no!" he protested. "There was nothing splendid about it. It was
only pride. You see the Corporation was my father's great idea--the
thing he created and put his soul into--and it was foundering. I know
that would have hurt him. One thing I've wanted to say to you, ever
since the day we talked together--about the duel. I want to say that
whatever lay behind it, my father's whole life was darkened by that
event. Now that I can put two and two together, I know that it was the
cause of his sadness."

"Ah, I can believe that," she replied.

"I think he had only two interests--myself and the Corporation. So you
see why I'd rather save that and be a beggar the rest of my natural
life. But I'm not a beggar. Damory Court alone is worth--I know it
now--a hundred times what I left."

"But to give up your own world--to let it all slip by, and to come here
to a spot that to you must seem desperately dull."

"I came here because the door of the old life was closed to me."

"You closed it yourself," she answered quickly.

"Maybe. But for whatever reason, it was closed. And you call this
dull--_dull_? Why, my life seems never to have had real interest
before!"

"I'm so glad you think that! You are so utterly different from what I
imagined you!"

"I could never have imagined you," he said, "never."

"I must be terribly outre."

"You are so many women in one. When I listened to your harp playing I
could hardly believe it was the same you I saw galloping across the
fields that morning. Now you are a different woman from both of those."

As she looked at him, her lips curled corner-wise, her foot slipped on
the sheer edge of the turf. She swayed toward him and he caught her,
feeling for a sharp instant the adorable nearness of her body. It ridged
all his skin with a creeping delight. She recovered her footing with an
exclamation, and turned back somewhat abruptly to the porch where she
seated herself on the step, drawing her filmy skirt aside to make a
place for him. There was a moment of silence which he broke.

"That exquisite serenade you were playing! You know the words, of
course."

"They are more lovely, if possible, than the score. Do you care for
poetry?"

"I've always loved it," he said. "I've been reading some lately--a
little old-fashioned book I found at Damory Court. It's _Lucile_. Do you
know it?"

"Yes. It's my mother's favorite."

He drew it from his pocket. "See, I