Because I don't happen to like the things that you like,
the things that you already have had the first full joy of
liking,--you've got to miss altogether your dimmer, second-hand
glimpse of happiness! Oh, I'm sorry, Father! Truly I am! Already I
sense the hurt of these latter years--the shattered expectations, the
incessant disappointments! You who have stared unblinkingly into the
face of the sun, robbed in your twilight of even a candle-flame. But,
Father?"

Grimly, despairingly, but with unfaltering persistence--Youth fighting
with its last gasp for the rights of its Youth--she lifted her haggard
little face to his. "But, Father!--my tragedy lies in the fact--that
at thirty--I've never yet had even my first-hand glimpse of happiness!
And now apparently, unless I'm willing to relinquish all hope of ever
having it, and consent to 'settle down,' as you call it, with 'good
old John Ellbertson'--I'll never even get a gamble--probably--at
sighting Happiness second-hand through another person's eyes!"

"Oh, but Eve!" protested her father. Nervously he jumped up and began
to pace the room. One side of his face was quite grotesquely
distorted, and his lean fingers, thrust precipitously into his
pockets, were digging frenziedly into their own palms. "Oh, but Eve!"
he reiterated sharply, "you will be happy with John! I know you will!
John is a--John is a--Underneath all that slowness, that ponderous
slowness--that--that--Underneath that--"

"That longish--reddish--grayish beard?" interpolated little Eve
Edgarton.

Glaringly for an instant the old eyes and the young eyes challenged
each other, and then the dark eyes retreated suddenly before--not the
strength but the weakness of their opponents.

"Oh, very well, Father," assented little Eve Edgarton. "Only--"
ruggedly the soft little chin thrust itself forth into stubborn
outline again. "Only, Father," she articulated with inordinate
distinctness, "you might just as well understand here and now, I
won't budge one inch toward Nunko-Nono--not one single solitary little
inch toward Nunko-Nono--unless at London, or Lisbon, or Odessa, or
somewhere, you let me fill up all the trunks I want to--with just
plain pretties--to take to Nunko-Nono! It isn't exactly, you know,
like a bride moving fifty miles out from town somewhere," she
explained painstakingly. "When a bride goes out to a place like
Nunko-Nono, it isn't enough, you understand, that she takes just the
things she needs