resemblance ends."

"You say that sadly. Why?"

"Did I? Well, perhaps I was thinking strongly, too."

"Is he a man who does things?" a note of strained curiosity in his
tones. Ten years!

"In what way do you mean?"

"Does he work in the world, does he invent, build, finance?"

Mayhap her eyes deceived her, but the tan on his face seemed less brown
than yellow.

"No; Mr. Ellison is a collector of paintings, of rugs, of rare old
books and china. He's a bit detached, as dreamers usually are. He has
written a book of exquisite verses. . . . You are smiling," she broke
off suddenly, her eyes filling with cold lights.

"A thousand pardons! The thought was going through my head how unlike
we are indeed. I can hardly tell one master from another, all old
books look alike to me, and the same with china. I know something
about rugs; but I couldn't write a jingle if it was to save me from
hanging."

"Do you invent, build, finance?" A bit of a gulf had opened up between
them. Elsa might not be prepared to marry Arthur, but she certainly
would not tolerate a covert sneer in regard to his accomplishments.

Quietly and with dignity he answered: "I have built bridges in my time
over which trains are passing at this moment. I have fought torrents,
and floods, and hurricanes, and myself. I have done a man's work. I
had a future, they said. But here I am, a subject of your pity."

She instantly relented. "But you are young. You can begin again."

"Not in the sense you mean."

"And yet, you tell me you are going back home."

"Like a thief in the night," bitterly.

XI

THE BLUE FEATHER

Elsa toyed with her emeralds, apparently searching for some flaw. Like
a thief in the night was a phrase that rang unpleasantly in her ears.
Her remarkable interest in the man was neither to be denied nor
ignored. In fact, drawing her first by the resemblance to the man she
wanted to love but could not, and then by the mystery that he had
thrown about his past simply by guarding it closely, it would have been
far more remarkable if she had not been deeply interested in him. But
to-night she paused for a moment. A little doubt, like one of those
oblique flaws that obscured the clarity of the green stones, appeared.
She had always been more or less indifferent to public opinion, but it
had been a careless thoughtless indifference; it had not possessed the
insolent twist of the past fortnight. To receive the c