lothes, and he will find that the world
doesn't think enough of him to set itself against him--find that the
world does not know him at all."

Taylor ventured upon the raveled platitude that clothes do not make the
man. Pennington shook his head, still examining his trousers. "That will
do in a copy-book, but not in life," said he. And then looking up as
Taylor moved toward the door, he asked: "Are you going?"

"Yes, I must get back to see how things are getting along. Be over again
to-morrow."

Louise went with him out into the passage. He halted at the log step and
stood there, looking at her. "Mr. Taylor, I can never forget your
kindness," she said.

"All right, but I hope you won't remember to mention it again."

He looked at her hands, looked into her eyes; and frankly she returned
his gaze, for it was a gaze long and questioning.

"Your friendship----" he held up his hand to stop her. "Won't you let me
speak of that, either?"

"You may speak of it, but you must know that it does not exist," he
answered, leaning against a corner of the house, still looking at her.

"But you don't mean that you are not my friend?"

"I mean what I told you some time ago--that there can be no friendship
between a big man and a little woman."

"Oh, I had forgotten that."

"No, you hadn't; you thought of it just then as you spoke."

"Why, Mr. Taylor, how can you say that?"

"I can say it because it is true. No, there can be no friendship between
us."

"You surely don't mean that there can be anything else." She had drawn
back from him and was stiffly erect with her arms folded, her head high;
and so narrow was the hard look she gave him that her eyes appeared
smaller. Her lips were so tightly compressed that dimples showed in her
cheeks; and thus with nature's soft relics of babyhood, she denied her
own resentment.

"On your part I don't presume that there can be anything else," he
answered, speaking the words slowly, as if he would weigh them one at a
time on the tip of his tongue. "You may think of me as you please, as
circumstances now compel you to think, and I will think of you not as I
please, but as I must."

"Please don't talk that way. Don't reproach me when I am in such need
of--of friendship. One of these days you may know me better, but now you
can regard me only as a freak. Yes, I am a freak."

"You are an angel."

"Mr. Taylor!" Again her head was high, and in her eyes was the same
suggestion of a sh