had seldom resisted temptation. This one he did not
even try to resist, and he placed his hand over hers.

"Katrine," he said, "I am not a particularly good man, but the gods have
willed that we meet--meet in strange moods and a strange way. I am a
better man to-night than I have ever been in my life. It's the music,
maybe, or the fringed gentian, or the whippoorwills." There was
love-making in every tone of his voice. "Whatever it is, it makes me
want to help you. May I? Will you trust me?"

She turned her hand upward, as a child might have done, to clasp his,
looking him full in the eyes as she did so.

"Utterly," she said.

"I have not always been considered trustworthy," he explained, lightly.

"People may not have understood you." There was a sweet explaining in
her voice.

"Which may have been, on the whole, fortunate for me," he answered, with
a curious smile.

"Don't," she said--"don't talk of yourself like that. I know you are
good, good, _good!_"

"Thank you," and again there came to him the throb in the throat he had
felt when their eyes first met. "Believe me," he said, "I shall always
try to be--to you," and as he spoke he raised her hand to his lips and
kissed it.

A noise startled him. Some one was approaching with uncertain footsteps
and a shuffling gait, and at the sound the girl's face turned crimson.

"Katrine, little Katrine, where are you?" a voice cried, thickly and
uncertainly, as a man came from under the gloom of the trees. There was
not a moment's hesitation. The child rose and put her arms around the
figure with a divine, womanly gesture, as though to shield him and his
infirmities from the whole world. It was the action of one ashamed to be
ashamed.

"Daddy," she said, laying her head against his shoulder, "this is Mr.
Ravenel!"

III

A KINDNESS WITH MIXED MOTIVES

In the walk home through the gloom of the night Frank Ravenel thought of
many things not hitherto considered in his philosophy. The women whom he
had known had presented few complexities to him. That he should be
giving a second thought to Katrine Dulany seemed humorous; but the more
he resolved to put her from his thoughts the more vivid the memory of
her became. He recalled his emotion when their eyes first met, and the
remembrance brought again the tightening of the throat which he had on
the hilltop. He could feel the clinging pressure of the slender hand,
could hear again the voice like a caress, an