“Estelle—­she has treated me shamefully,” said Adelaide.  “I haven’t seen her for more than a year—­except just a glimpse as I was driving down Monroe Street one day.  How beautiful she has become!  But, then, she always was pretty.  And neither her father nor her mother, nor any of the rest of the family is especially good-looking.  She doesn’t in the least resemble them.”

“There probably was a time when her father and mother really loved,” said Dory.  “I’ve often thought that when one sees a beautiful man or woman, one is seeing the monument to some moment of supreme, perfect happiness.  There are hours when even the meanest creatures see the islands of enchantment floating in the opal sea.”

Adelaide was gazing dreamily into the sunset.  It was some time before she came back, dropped from the impersonal to the personal, which is the normal attitude of most young people and of all the self-absorbed.  Simeon, who had been inspecting Dory from the far upper end of the hammock, now descended to the floor of the veranda, and slowly advanced toward him.  Dory put out his hand.  “How are you, cousin?” he said, gravely shaking Simeon’s extended paw.  Simeon chattered delightedly and sprang into Dory’s lap to nestle comfortably there.

“I always thought you would fall in love with Estelle, some day,” Adelaide was saying.

Dory looked at Simeon with an ironical smile.  “Why does she say those things to me?” he asked.  Simeon looked at Adelaide with a puzzled frown that said, “Why, indeed?”

“You and Estelle are exactly suited to each other,” explained she.

“Exactly unsuited,” replied he.  “I have nothing that she needs; she has nothing that I need.  And love is an exchange of needs.  Now, I have hurt your vanity.”

“Why do you say that?” demanded Adelaide.

“You’d like to feel that your lover came to you empty-handed, asking everything, humbly protesting that he had nothing to give.  And you know that I—­” He smiled soberly.  “Sometimes I think you have really nothing I need or want, that I care for you because you so much need what I can give.  You poor pauper, with the delusion that you are rich!”

“You are frank,” said she, smiling, but not liking it.

“And why shouldn’t I be?  I’ve given up hope of your ever seeing the situation as it is.  I’ve nothing to lose with you.  Besides, I shouldn’t want you on any false terms.  One has only to glance about him to shrink from the horrors of marriage based on delusions and lies.  So, I can afford to be frank.”

She gave him a puzzled look.  She had known him all her life; they had played together almost every day until she was seventeen and went East, to school, with Janet Whitney.  It was while she was at home on her first long vacation that she had flirted with him, had trapped him into an avowal of love; and then, having made sure of the truth which her vanity of conquest and the fascination of his free and frank