teasing memory. "You are putting strange riddles to me this
morning, Mr. Gordon," she demurred.

Had she ever seen a wild creature expecting destruction at human
hands? No, surely not, she told herself, and yet this wistful pleading
expression might be just the look in the eyes of an animal facing
death but dumbly begging for life.

Then, in a flash, it all came back--her own little parlor, Billikins
whining and hiding in her skirts in mysterious terror, and Felix Brand
gazing at her with all the usual soft, caressing look of his brown
eyes curtained behind some absorbing anxiety and fear. But in these
eyes into which she was looking now there was no fear, only a
longing that her answer should be what he wished. She shivered as
a half-sensed intuition of impending tragedy shot through her.

"You--you make me feel as if I were a judge and called upon to
pronounce sentence upon some one," she said and tried to pass the
situation off with a little laugh as she added, "Really, it isn't
fair!"

But he would not have it so and with even greater earnestness and
solemnity pressed his question farther: "Then we'll put it another
way. Suppose a mother about to bear a man-child could choose its soul
and the life it was to live. Which of those two men would a good,
noble woman wish her son to be? Imagine yourself in such a woman's
place, Miss Marne, and tell me, which would be your choice."

She felt the compelling force of his earnestness and she was moved by
the intense feeling evident in his voice, look and manner. Her face
blanched with the sudden conviction that some high consequence hung
upon her answer. But she took counsel bravely with herself for a
little space as her gaze wandered across the water.

"I think," she replied slowly, "yes, I'm quite sure, any good woman
would wish her son to be good rather than great. I don't believe any
good woman would hesitate at all, if it were possible for her to make
such a choice."

He straightened up and a solemn joy overspread his eyes and face. "I
thank you, Miss Marne," he said, barely resting for an instant one
hand upon hers that lay on the rail. "I had little doubt what your
answer would be, because you are a good woman. But I wanted to know
for a certainty. It is my final warrant that I am right."

He said no more, and Henrietta, a little awed by the rapt, triumphant
look with which, sitting upright with head thrown back, he gazed into
the distance, kept silence also