her godfather's
sinewy fingers. She tried to smile into his face. "Dear Godfather," she
said wistfully, "if it were only myself--but the children--"

"What do you mean, Lydia? What do you mean?" he demanded with tremulous
indignation.

She dropped her eyes again and drew a long, sighing breath. "I haven't
strength to explain to you all I mean," she said gently, "and I think
you know without my telling you. You have always known what is in my
heart."

"I had thought there was some affection for me in your heart," said the
doctor, thrusting out his lips to keep them from trembling.

Lydia's drooping position changed slightly. She lifted her hands and
folded them together on the table, leaning forward, and bending full on
the doctor the somber intensity of her dark, deep-sunken eyes. "Dear
Godfather, I have no time or strength to waste." The slowness with which
she chose her words gave them a solemn weight. "I cannot choose. If it
hurts you to have me speak truth, you must be hurt. You know what a
failure I have made of my life, how I have missed everything worth
having--"

Dr. Melton, driven hard by some overmastering emotion, drew back, and
threw aside precipitately the tacit understanding he and Lydia had
always kept. "Lydia, what are you talking about! You have been more than
usually favored--you have been loved and cherished as few women--" His
voice died away under Lydia's honest, tragic eyes.

She went on as though he had not spoken. "My children must know
something different. My children must have a chance at the real things.
If I die, who can give it to them? Even if I live, shall I be wise
enough to give them what I had not wisdom or strength enough to get for
myself?"

"You speak as though I were not in the world, Lydia," the doctor broke
in bitterly, "or as though you hated and mistrusted me. Why do you look
to a stranger to--"

"Could you do for my children what you have not done for yourself?" she
asked him earnestly. "How much would you see of them? How much would you
know of them? How much of your time would you be willing to sacrifice to
learn patiently the inner lives of two little children? You would be
busy all day, like the other people I know, making money for them to
dress like other well-to-do children, for them to live in this fine, big
house, for them to go to expensive private schools with the children of
the people you know socially--for them to be as much as possible like
the father