ick
pupil."

Electra glowed.

"I know what he would have said, if he had had time. He did not need to
tell me."

Rose sat wondering what argument would move her.

"Electra," she ventured, "have you had any curiosity about my father's
relations to other people?"

"He had no time to tell me," said Electra, with a proud dignity.

"No, he would not have told you. He never confused his relations. Did
you know he was adored by women?"

Electra's face flamed. She made no answer. If she could have set forth
adequately what was in her tumultuous thoughts, she would have told Rose
that nothing seemed so entirely her own as her part in Markham MacLeod's
life. She had no curiosity over his past, no doubt of what her future
would have been with him, accepting what he chose to give her, and
finding it enough.

Rose pursued her into the cloister of her thought.

"Do you know, Electra," she was urging, "do you know how women devoted
themselves to him?"

"They must have devoted themselves to him. I am one of them. I am proud
to be."

"Ah, but, Electra, to take so much and give nothing!"

"How do you dare to say he gave nothing?"

"I know. I was slow in learning. I learned it first through your
brother. No, don't put me off with a gesture. I must speak of him. It
was he who showed me the cruelty of my father's attitude toward women.
He laughed over it, but he showed me."

"He was never cruel." Electra seemed to be dreaming away in a sad
reminiscence of his kindness.

"But to promise so much, Electra, and give nothing! He implied to every
one, I have no doubt, that she was his great helper, that he would have
married her if he had not been set aside by his work. That was like him.
He was a sponge drinking up devotion."

"Yes, and he gave it back to the hungry and the thirsty and the cold."

"I don't know. I do know what he absorbed. One woman did translations
for him. She worked like a dog, and he paid her with one of his looks.
Another--she was a titled lady--kept his suite of rooms ready for him,
and when he came, treated him like a prince. And they all had this sense
of intimacy with him. Each thought she was the only one. Each felt she
was divided from him by hard circumstance, but she should possess him in
the end."

"In heaven?" asked Electra, eager for the slightest knowledge of him.

"No, not in heaven. My father always said his expectations stopped here.
He never carried the game on there."

"The great