her right."

In the midst of the discussion of clothes and house rents and other
people's possessions, interspersed with anecdotes of a kind that was new
to Honora, Sidney Dallam appeared at the door and beckoned to her.

"How silly of you, Sid!" exclaimed his wife; "of course she doesn't want
to go."

"Indeed I do," protested Honora, rising with alacrity and following her
host up the stairs. At the end of a hallway a nurse, who had been reading
beside a lamp, got up smilingly and led the way on tiptoe into the
nursery, turning on a shaded electric light. Honora bent over the crib.
The child lay, as children will, with his little yellow head resting on
his arm. But in a moment, as she stood gazing at him, he turned and
opened his eyes and smiled at her, and she stooped and kissed him.

"Where's Daddy?" he demanded.

"We've waked him!" said Honora, remorsefully.

"Daddy," said the child, "tell me a story."

The nurse looked at Dallam reproachfully, as her duty demanded, and yet
she smiled. The noise of laughter reached them from below.

"I didn't have any to-night," the child pleaded.

"I got home late," Dallam explained to Honora, and, looking at the nurse,
pleaded in his turn; "just one."

"Just a tiny one," said the child.

"It's against all rules, Mr. Dallam," said the nurse, "but--he's been
very lonesome to-day."

Dallam sat down on one side of him, Honora on the other.

"Will you go to sleep right away if I do, Sid?" he asked.

The child shut his eyes very tight.

"Like that," he promised.

It was not the Sidney Dallam of the counting-room who told that story,
and Honora listened with strange sensations which she did not attempt to
define.

"I used to be fond of that one when I was a youngster," he explained
apologetically to her as they went out, and little Sid had settled
himself obediently on the pillow once more. "It was when I dreamed," he
added, "of less prosaic occupations than the stock market."

Sidney Dallam had dreamed!

Although Lily Dallam had declared that to leave her house before midnight
was to insult her, it was half-past eleven when Honora and her husband
reached home. He halted smilingly in her doorway as she took off her wrap
and laid it over a chair.

"Well, Honora," he asked, "how do you like--the whirl of fashion?"

She turned to him with one of those rapid and bewildering movements that
sometimes characterized her, and put her arms on his shoulders.

"What a dea