o thoroughly
understood--all one's weaknesses laid bare--yet it was a relief and a
joy, too--like the cruel healing knife of the surgeon. Said he:

"I do not like kept women."

She gasped, grew ghastly. It was a frightful insult, one for which she
was wholly unprepared. "You--believe--that?" she said slowly.

"Another of those questions," he said. And he looked calmly away, out
over the sea, as if his interest in the conversation were at an end.

What should she say? How deny--how convince him? For convince him she
must, and then go away and never permit him to speak to her again until
he had apologized. She said quietly: "Mr. Keith, you have insulted
me."

"I do not like kept women, either with or without a license," said he
in the same even, indifferent way. "When you ceased to be a kept woman,
I would help you, if I could. But no one can help a kept woman."

There was nothing to do but to rise and go away. She rose and went
toward the house. At the veranda she paused. He had not moved. She
returned. He was still inspecting the horizon, the cigarette depending
from his lips--how DID he keep it alight? She said:

"Mr. Keith, I am sure you did not mean to insult me. What did you mean?"

"Another of those questions," said he.

"Honestly, I do not understand."

"Then think. And when you have thought, you will understand."

"But I have thought. I do not understand."

"Then it would be useless to explain," said he. "That is one of those
vital things which, if one cannot understand them for oneself, one is
hopeless--is beyond helping."

"You mean I am not in earnest about my career?"

"Another of those questions. If you had not seen clearly what I meant,
you would have been really offended. You'd have gone away and not come
back."

She saw that this was true. And, seeing, she wondered how she could
have been so stupid as not to have seen it at once. She had yet to
learn that overlooking the obvious is a universal human failing and
that seeing the obvious is the talent and the use of the superior of
earth--the few who dominate and determine the race.

"You reproach me for not having helped you," he went on. "How does it
happen that you are uneasy in mind--so uneasy that you are quarreling
at me?"

A light broke upon her. "You have been drawing me on, from the
beginning," she cried. "You have been helping me--making me see that I
needed help."

"No," said he. "I've been waiting to