itself depend so completely upon your smile, upon a soft glance in your
eyes, that when they are not there, why, I suffer, I don't know how to
live at all. So be kinder to me, Celia!"

"I was kinder, as you call it, when you came in," she replied. "I
told you to go away. That was pure kindness--more kindness than you
deserved."

Theron looked at his hat, where it stood on the carpet by his feet. He
felt tears coming into his eyes. "You tell me that you remember," he
said, in depressed tones, "and yet you treat me like this! Perhaps I am
wrong. No doubt it is my own fault. I suppose I ought not to have come
down here at all."

Celia nodded her head in assent to this view.

"But I swear that I was helpless in the matter," he burst forth. "I HAD
to come! It would have been literally impossible for me to have stayed
at home, knowing that you were here, and knowing also that--that--"

"Go on!" said Celia, thrusting forth her under-lip a trifle, and
hardening still further the gleam in her eye, as he stumbled over his
sentence and left it unfinished. "What was the other thing that you were
'knowing'?"

"Knowing--" he took up the word hesitatingly--"knowing that life would
be insupportable to me if I could not be near you."

She curled her lip at him. "You skated over the thin spot very well,"
she commented. "It was on the tip of your tongue to mention the fact