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236 seemed the only point of life in that house of dead and silent mustiness.

"I can't talk to you any longer," she said in lowered tones. "I really can't!"

"Why not?" he demanded.

"I'd be punished for it," she told him, without meeting his eye, "cruelly punished."

She had spoken quietly enough, but there was an undertone of passion in her words.

"That doesn't sound reasonable," he expostulated. For she seemed, in her present mood and posture, far removed from the child.

"It isn't," he heard her answering. "But there's nothing I can do about it."

"How old are you?" he asked with a frankness sired by impatience.

"I'm nineteen—almost twenty," she told him, with her habitual impersonal candor.

"Then that makes it more unreasonable than ever," he proclaimed with a touch of triumph.

"All my life has been unreasonable."

"But" he began, and broke off. Still