lly, beginning
to lose the light touch already--"you meant that it was a wonderful
happening, didn't you? Your idea seems to be that all this just
happened."

But no, Mr. V.V. denied that vigorously, and stated his logical theory:
that her father had chanced to postpone his intentions, merely through
the well-known fact that men get accustomed to conditions that they
constantly see; but that she, going there with fresh eyes....

"I might have gone there a hundred times, but I'd never have thought of
it as having anything to do with me--don't you know it?--if it hadn't
been for you."

He looked at her briefly; and she saw that his look was as bewildered as
a battle-ground.

"Oh!... Do you mean that you _are_ doing it because of--to--to avoid
the--that is, on account of the articles?"

"Oh, _not_ the articles!--_no_! That's just what I don't mean. I've
never thought of the articles! I don't think of you that way at all...."

She stopped precipitately, somehow divining that she was mysteriously
wounding him. And then suddenly she understood that that _was_ the way
he thought of himself, exactly; that he, who unconsciously moved
mountains by his gentleness, somehow saw himself only in the light of
his "terrible" (but still unpublished) articles. It was as if he
reckoned himself as either an article-writer, or nothing....

"Though it's true," said Cally, gently, with hardly any pause at all,
"that through most of the time I've known you I've thought of you ... as
a hard man ... terribly uncompromising."

His, it was clear, was not a tongue that spoke easily about himself. He
finished putting a flower-box into the window of the new Works,
before he said:

"I hope we needn't trouble now about anything at all that's past."

"That's what I hope, too ... more than you could. And besides--I've
always liked you best when you were gentle. And ... it's because of what
you've taught me--at those times--that I'm doing this to-day."

Again he turned his singularly lucid gaze full upon her; and now his
look was absolutely startled. Color was coming into his face. His short,
crisp hair, which had been parted so neatly an hour ago, stood rumpled
all over his head, not mitigating the general queerness of his
appearance. And yet his mouth wore a smile, humorous and disparaging.

"May I ask what you consider that I've taught you?"

"Everything I know," said Cally, lacing a pencil between her fingers.

"Why!... When we've neve