ied part of his nature, and moved him to say:

"Oh, Lila--Lila--Lila--I need you--I need you--God knows, dear, how I do
need you. Won't you come to me sometimes? Won't your mother ever
relent--won't she? If she knew, she would be kind. Oh, Lila, Lila," he
called as the two stood together there in the twilight with the glow of
the coals in the fireplace upon them, "Lila, won't you let me take you
home even--in my car? Surely your mother wouldn't care for that, would
she?"

The girl looked into the fire and answered, "No," and shook her head.
"No--mother would be pleased, I think. She has always told me to be kind
to you--to be respectful to you, sir. I've tried to be, sir?"

Her voice rose in a question. He answered by taking her arm and
pleading, "Oh, come--won't you let me take you home in my car,
Lila--it's getting late--won't you, Lila?"

But the girl turned away; he let her arm drop. She answered, shaking her
head:

"I think, sir, if you don't mind--I'd rather walk."

In another second she was gone. Her father leaned against the mantel and
the dying coals warmed tears in his hungry, furtive eyes, and his face
twitched for a moment before he turned, and walked with some show of
pride to his grand car. Half an hour later he was driving homeward,
looking neither to the right nor to the left, when his ear caught the
word, "Lila," in a girlish treble near him. He looked up to see a young
miss--a Calvin young miss, in fact--running and waving her hands toward
a group of boys and girls in their middle teens and late teens, trooping
up the hill along the sidewalk. They were neighborhood children, and
Lila seemed to be the center of the circle. He slowed down his car to
watch them. Near Lila was Kenyon Adams, a tall, beautiful youth, fiddle
box in hand, but still a boy even though he was twenty. Other boys
played about the group and through it, but none was so striking as
Kenyon, tall, lithe, with a beautifully poised head of crinkly chestnut
hair, who strode gayly among the youths and maidens and yet was not
quite of them. Even the Judge could see that Kenyon did not exactly
belong--that he was rare and exotic. But as her father's car crept
unnoticed past the group, he could see that Lila belonged. She was in no
way exotic among the Calvins and Kollanders and the Wrights, and the
children of the neighbors in Elm Street. Lila's clear, merry laugh--a
laugh that rang like an old bell through Tom Van Dorn's heart--rose
a