?"

"As a confession that--that you were right. But I didn't know I owned
it. Truly I didn't. You'll believe that, won't you?"

"Of course," he cried eagerly. "I did know it, but too late."

"If you'd known in time would you have--"

"Left that out of the paper?" he finished, all the life gone from his
voice. "No, Esme. I couldn't have done that. But I could have said in
the paper that you didn't know."

"I thought so," she said very quietly.

He misinterpreted this. "I can't lie to you, Esme," he said with a sad
sincerity. "I've lived with lies too long. I can't do it, not for any
hope of happiness. Do I seem false and disloyal to you? Sometimes I do
to myself. I can't help it. All a man can do is to follow his own light.
Or a woman either, I suppose. And your light and mine are worlds apart."

Again, with a stab of memory, he saw that desperate smile on her lips.
Then she spoke with the clear courage of her new-found womanliness.

"There is no light for me where you are not."

He took a swift step toward her. And at the call, sweetly and
straightly, she came to meet his arms and lips.

"Poor boy!" she said, a few minutes later, pushing a lock of hair from
his forehead. "I've let you carry that burden when a word from me would
have lifted it."

"Has there ever been such a thing as unhappiness in the world,
sweetheart?" he said. "I can't remember it. So I don't believe it."

"I'm afraid I've cost you more than I can ever repay you for," she said.
"Hal, tell me I've been a little beast!--Oh, no! That's no way to tell
it. Aren't you sorry, sir, that you ever saw this room?"

"Finest example of interior architecture I know of. Exact replica of the
plumb center of Paradise."

"It's where all your troubles began. You first met me here in this very
room."

"Oh, no! My troubles began from the minute I set eyes on you, that day
at the station."

"Don't contradict me." She laid an admonitory finger on his lips, then,
catching at his hand, gently drew him with her. "Right in that very
window-seat there--" She whisked the hangings aside, and brushed McGuire
Ellis's nose in so doing.

"Hoong!" snorted McGuire Ellis.

"Oh!" cried Esme. "Were you there all the time? We--I--didn't know--Have
you been asleep?"

"I have been just that," replied the dormant one, yawning.

"I hope we haven't disturbed--" began Esme in the same breath with Hal's
awkward "Sorry we waked you up, Mac."

"Don't be--" Ellis checked hi