let her daughter marry the son of a woman who,
more than any other woman in the world, has wronged her? I'm sure Laura
cherishes no malice toward Kenyon's mother. Yet, of course," the Doctor
spoke deliberately and puffed between his words, "blood is blood. But I
don't know how much blood is blood, I mean how much of what we call
heredity in human beings is due to actual blood transmission of traits,
and how much is due to the development of traits by family environment.
I'm not sure, Amos, that this boy's bad blood has not been entirely
eliminated by the kindly, beautiful family environment he has had with
you and yours. There seems to be nothing of the Muellers in him, but his
face and his music--I take it his music is of German origin."

"I don't know--I don't know, Doctor," answered Amos. "I've tried to take
him apart, and put him together again, but I can't find where the parts
belong."

And so they droned on, those three wiseacres--two oldish gentlemen and a
middle-aged man, thinking they could change or check or dam the course
of true love. While inside at the piano on the tide of music that was
washing in from God only knows what bourne where words are useless and
passions speak the primitive language of souls, Lila and Kenyon were
solving all the problems set for them by their elders and betters. For
they lived in another world from those who established themselves in the
Providence business out on the veranda. And on this earth, even in the
same houses, and in the same families, there is no communication between
the worlds. With our powerful lenses of memory we men and women in our
forties gaze earnestly and long at the distant planets of youth,
wondering if they are really inhabited by real people--or mere animals,
perchance--if they have human institutions, reasonable aspirations or
finite intelligences. We take temperatures, make blood counts and record
blood pressure, reckon the heart-beats, and think we are wondrous wise.
But wig-wag as we may, signal with what mysterious wireless of
evanescent youth-fire we still hold in our blood, we get nothing but
vague hints, broken reminiscences, and a certain patchwork of our own
subconscious chop logic of middle age in return. There is no real
communication between the worlds. Youth remains another planet--even as
age and childhood are other planets.

Now, after the three wise men had considered the star glowing before
them, they decided thus:

"Well," quoth t