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 night and that Fidelia had left him to go to a man whom she had married previously.

"I danced with David," Alice announced and she waited for what her parents would say.

They possessed the caution and also the self-control to say little, immediately, but Sothron did not start to his office at the usual hour. He devoted half the morning to an anxious discussion with his wife yet they evolved nothing better than a proposal to take Alice to California.

But Alice would not go. She simply refused and said, "Of course you want to take me away from David because you know I love him and you're afraid I'll marry him, if he asks me. Well, I will!"

When her father suggested, "Suppose your mother and I both go to California and we close the house," Alice replied, "I'll stay in Chicago." And nothing more was said about a trip.

Some days later, her father asked Alice, "You're seeing David?"

"No; he's not made any effort to see me yet."

"But you think he will?"

"I hope so, father."

"That means you'll see him, if he does."

"Of course I will."

"Please have him come to the house, then; please do not go elsewhere to meet him."

Alice agreed, "I won't—if he'll come to the house."

Sothron said to his wife that night, "Her abjectness before that fellow is simply inconceivable."

"It's not abjectness," Alice's mother corrected.