was the most tactless person upon
earth,--a fluffy, feathery, untidy cockatoo of a man, perfectly
good-natured, but absolutely centered upon his own silly self. If
anything could have driven me from Gladys, it would have been the
thought of such a father-in-law. I am convinced that he really
believed in his heart that I came round to the Chestnuts three days a
week for the pleasure of his company, and very especially to hear his
views upon bimetallism, a subject upon which he was by way of being an
authority.

For an hour or more that evening I listened to his monotonous chirrup
about bad money driving out good, the token value of silver, the
depreciation of the rupee, and the true standards of exchange.

"Suppose," he cried with feeble violence, "that all the debts in the
world were called up simultaneously, and immediate payment insisted
upon,--what under our present conditions would happen then?"

I gave the self-evident answer that I should be a ruined man, upon
which he jumped from his chair, reproved me for my habitual levity,
which made it impossible for him to discuss any reasonable subject in
my presence, and bounced off out of the room to dress for a Masonic
meeting.

At last I was alone with Gladys, and the moment of Fate had come! All
that evening I had felt like the soldier who awaits the signal which
will send him on a forlorn hope; hope of victory and fear of repulse
alternating in his mind.

She sat with that proud, delicate profile of hers outlined against the
red curtain. How beautiful she was! And yet how aloof! We had been
friends, quite good friends; but never could I get beyond the same
comradeship which I might have established with one of my
fellow-reporters upon the Gazette,--perfectly frank, perfectly kindly,
and perfectly unsexual. My instincts are all against a woman being too
frank and at her ease with me. It is no compliment to a man. Where
the real sex feeling begins, timidity and distrust are its companions,
heritage from old wicked days when love and violence went often hand in
hand. The bent head, the averted eye, the faltering voice, the wincing
figure--these, and not the unshrinking gaze and frank reply, are the
true signals of passion. Even in my short life I had learned as much
as that--or had inherited it in that race memory which we call instinct.

Gladys was full of every womanly quality. Some judged her to be cold
and hard; but such a thought was treason. Tha