yes; now and then, of course. But——”

“You are trying to tell me that I have guessed[18] wrong. Before you go any farther, let me say this: your relations with Judith may have meant nothing to you; but how about Judith herself? She is warm-blooded, ardent, and much more mature than you are, in spite of the difference in your ages. Be very sure that you don’t owe her something, David—the biggest debt that a woman can ever hold against a man. Now go on and tell me as much as you care to about the other girl—the real one.”

[18]

David was still showing the marks of disturbance, but he went on manfully.

“There isn’t so very much to tell. I’ve—well, I’ve just found her, that’s all. I met her last winter at Palm Beach. She was down there with a bunch of New York people who go there every year. Raglan, my chief on the Government job, knew her and some of her New York friends. He began to introduce me, but she laughed and said, ‘Mr. Vallory and I were rocked in the same cradle—in Old Middleboro,’ and that settled it.”

The beaten man in the desk chair roused himself to say: “Then you did know her as a child? She belongs here?”

“Not now. She is a citizen of a very much larger world.”

[19]“Do I know her, or her people?—but of course I must.”

[19]

“You do. You have held her on your knee and told her fairy tales many a time, while I stood by and listened. Doesn’t that place her for you?”

Adam Vallory shook his head with a smile that was reminiscent of pleasanter things than the navigating of stormy seas in a sinking business craft.

“I have held many little girls on my knee to tell them fairy stories, David. That is another reason why I should never have been a banker; I love children—and fairy tales—far too well.”

“You would never guess,” said David, with all the fatuousness of the new-born lover. “Yet you and her father were schoolboys together.”

Adam Vallory roused himself again. “Not Eben Grillage?” he said.

“Yes; she is Mr. Grillage’s daughter; the brown-eyed little Vinnie we used to know; though they all call her ‘Miss Virginia’ now.”

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