“But the subject is not agreeable to either of us, Miss Loring,” said Dexter in a voice pitched to a lower tone, and with a softer modulation.  “I did not expect to find a visitor here at so early an hour; and I fear that I have permitted myself to experience just a shade of annoyance.  If I have seemed ill-natured, pardon me.  It is not my nature to find fault, or to criticise.  I rather prefer looking upon the bright side.  Like Sir Joshua Reynolds, ’I am a wide liker.’  There are times, you know, in which we are all tempted to act in a way that gives to others a false impression of our real characters.”

“No one is more conscious of that than I am,” replied Miss Loring.  “Indeed, it seems often, as if I were made the sport of adverse influences, and constrained to act and to appear wholly different from what I desire to seem.  There are some of life’s phenomena, Mr. Dexter, that puzzle at times my poor brain sorely.”

“Don’t puzzle over such things, Miss Loring,” said Mr. Dexter; “I never do.  Leave mysteries to philosophers; there is quite enough of enjoyment upon the surface of things without diving below, into the dark caverns of doubt and vague speculation.  I never liked the word phenomenon.”

“To me it has ever been an attraction.  I always seem standing at some closed door, hearkening to vague sounds within and longing to enter.  The outer life presents itself to me as moving figures in a show, and I am all impatient, at times, to discover the hidden machinery that gives such wonderful motion.

“Morbid; all morbid!” answered Dexter, in a lively manner.  “Dreams in the place of realities, Miss Loring.  Don’t philosophize; don’t speculate; don’t think—­at least not seriously.  Your thinkers are always miserable.  Take life as it is—­full of beauty, full of pleasure.  The sources of enjoyment are all around us.  Let us drink at them and be thankful.”

“You are a philosopher, I perceive,” said Miss Loring, with a smile, “and must have been a thinker, in some degree, to have formed a theory.”

“I am a cheerful philosopher.”

“Are you always cheerful, Mr. Dexter?” inquired Miss Loring.

“Always.”

“Never feel the pressure of gloomy states?  Have no transitions of feeling—­sudden, unaccountable; as if the shadow of a cloud had fallen over your spirit?”

“Never.”

“You are singularly fortunate.”

“Am I, Miss Loring?” and the young man’s voice grew tender as he leaned nearer to the maiden.

“I am blessed with a cheerful temper,” he added, “and I cultivate the inheritance.  It is a good gift—­blessing both the inheritor and his companions.  Neither men nor women are long gloomy in my presence.”

“I have often noticed your smiling face and pleasant words,” said Jessie, “and wondered if you moved always in a sunny atmosphere.”

“You are answered now,” he replied.

A little while there was silence.  Jessie did not feel the repulsion which had at first made Dexter’s presence annoying; and as he drew his chair closer, and leaned still nearer, there was on her part no instinctive receding.