"I can't afford it," said she. "What I have is good enough--and costs
more than I've the right to pay." And her tone silenced him; it was the
tone of finality, and he had discovered that she had a will.

* * * * *

Never before had Frederick Norman let any important thing drift. And
when he started in with Dorothy he had no idea of changing that fixed
policy. He would have scoffed if anyone had foretold to him that he
would permit the days and the weeks to go by with nothing definite
accomplished toward any definite purpose. Yet that was what occurred.
Every time he came he had in mind a fixed resolve to make distinct
progress with the girl. Every time he left he had a furious quarrel with
himself for his weakness. "She is making a fool of me," he said to
himself. "She _must_ be laughing at me." But he returned only to repeat
his folly, to add one more to the lengthening, mocking series of lost
opportunities.

The truth lay deeper than he saw. He recognized only his own weakness of
the infatuated lover's fatuous timidity. He did not realize how potent
her charm for him was, how completely content she made him when he was
with her, just from the fact that they were together. After a time an
unsatisfied passion often thus diffuses itself, ceases to be a narrow
torrent, becomes a broad river whose resistless force is hidden beneath
an appearance of sparkling calm. Her ingenuousness amused him; her
developing taste and imagination interested him; her freshness, her
freedom from any sense of his importance in the world fascinated him,
and there was a keener pleasure than he dreamed in the novel sensation
of breathing the perfume of what he, the one time cynic, would have