fort to live that brought out the
strength of every quality I possessed. I learned to know myself, which
is a farther reaching wisdom than is found in knowing others. I had
ideals then,--and--old as I am, I have them still."

He paused. She was silent. Her eyes were lowered, and she played idly
with her painted fan.

"I wonder if it would surprise you," he went on, "to know that I have
made an ideal of _you_?"

She looked up with a smile.

"Really? Have you? I'm afraid I shall prove a disappointment!"

He did not answer by the obvious compliment which she felt she had a
right to expect. He kept his gaze fixed steadily on her face, and his
shaggy eyebrows almost met in the deep hollow which painful thought had
ploughed along his forehead.

"I have made," he said, "an ideal in my mind of the little child who sat
on my knee, played with my watch-chain and laughed at me when I called
her my little sweetheart. She was perfectly candid in her laughter,--she
knew it was absurd for an old man to have a child as his sweetheart. I
loved to hear her laugh so,--because she was true to herself, and to her
right and natural instincts. She was the prettiest and sweetest child I
ever saw,--full of innocent dreams and harmless gaiety. She began to
grow up, and I saw less and less of her, till gradually I lost the child
and found the woman. But I believe in the child's heart still--I think
that the truth and simplicity of the child's soul are still in the
womanly nature,--and in that way, Lucy, I yet hold you as an ideal."

Her breath quickened a little.

"You think too kindly of me," she murmured, furling and unfurling her
fan slowly; "I'm not at all clever."

He gave a slight deprecatory gesture.

"Cleverness is not what I expect or have ever expected of you," he said.
"You have not as yet had to endure the misrepresentation and wrong which
frequently make women clever,--the life of solitude and despised dreams
which moves a woman to put on man's armour and sally forth to fight the
world and conquer it, or else die in the attempt. How few conquer, and
how many die, are matters of history. Be glad you are not a clever
woman, Lucy!--for genius in a woman is the mystic laurel of Apollo
springing from the soft breast of Daphne. It hurts in the growing, and
sometimes breaks the heart from which it grows."

She answered nothing. He was talking in a way she did not
understand,--his allusion to Apollo and Daphne was completely bey