banished the wrath.  God had chosen to paint him in soft and tender colors.  God had given to his soul-pattern a certain beauty, and if there had gone into the design no bold strokes, he himself was no more to blame than he would have been for the failure to see, had he been born blind.  His weakness doubtless carried its own penalty of suffering.  Perhaps had the guidance been there, the wanted qualities might have been trained into him.  Hamilton had seen that, but Hamilton’s hand had not had the light touch for the delicacy of the task’s beginnings.

Her mind flashed back to her girlhood.  She was standing at the paddock fence of her grandfather’s stock-farm in Kentucky.

Even in her childish heart there had been a mighty pride for the old gold and blue that were the colors of her grandfather’s stables.  They were silks that raced true to tradition, for no mere gambler’s venturing, but for the gentleman’s pride in his horse-flesh and his inherent love of sport.  Much of the stamina that had kept her heart from breaking had been instilled in those lessons of the gallantry of the long struggle and the endurance of the home-stretch.

She remembered a certain chestnut colt whose name had gone down in turf history.  She had known that colt from a weanling and to her he had not been an animal, but a personality.

Yet that splendid-hearted creature which could out-game his fields in a smothering drive when his heart was near bursting had been a disappointment in two-year-old form because he had seemed to sulk and falter and lack courage.  Under the whip his speed died and his petulance cropped out.  It had only been when a jockey was found whose soft touch of the reins nursed the head and held it up and encouraged, that the horse had come in to his own and made his name great.  Might it not be so with a man as well as with a horse?

“Yes,” she said, “it has been a bit of a trial, but it has been funny, too,” and straightway she launched into a flow of anecdote that touched up with whimsical and delightful humor every bit of poor comedy that had tinged the days of the tour.  And as she talked the man laughed with sheer delight and amusement.

But it was growing late, and Marcia was exhausted with the outflow of spirits.  He might be comforted, but tomorrow she must again take up the dull thread of her routine.  It would not be easier for tonight’s disappointment; for the coming of the rescuing knight who upon arrival had only clamored mournfully for assistance.

After all she could only stand so much, and just now she felt that the margin of endurance was narrow.  Yet there was to be said the most important thing of all, and the most trying.

“Paul,” she began slowly, but in a voice of finality, “when you go back tomorrow, you mustn’t come to see me again.  At least not for a long while.”

His face became a mask of tragic disappointment, and his voice was pleading.