"Hugh, you're a silly old goose!"

"That's why I came here, I think, to be told so," I said.

Tea was brought in. A sense of at-homeness stole over me,--I was more at
home here in this room with Nancy, than in any other place in the world;
here, where everything was at once soothing yet stimulating, expressive
of her, even the smaller objects that caught my eye,--the crystal
inkstand tipped with gold, the racks for the table books, her
paper-cutter. Nancy's was a discriminating luxury. And her talk! The
lightness with which she touched life, the unexplored depths of her,
guessed at but never fathomed! Did she feel a little the need of me as I
felt the need of her?

"Why, I believe you're incurably romantic, Hugh," she said laughingly,
when the men had left the room. "Here you are, what they call a paragon
of success, a future senator, Ambassador to England. I hear of those
remarkable things you have done--even in New York the other day a man was
asking me if I knew Mr. Paret, and spoke of you as one of the coming men.
I suppose you will be moving there, soon. A practical success! It always
surprises me when I think of it, I find it difficult to remember what a
dreamer you were and here you turn out to be still a dreamer! Have you
discovered, too, the emptiness of it all?" she inquired provokingly. "I
must say you don't look it"--she gave me a critical, quizzical
glance--"you look quite prosperous and contented, as though you enjoyed
your power."

I laughed uneasily.

"And then," she continued, "and then one day when your luncheon has