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 He did not intentionally put such a personal question as that but, when he was with this girl, an impulse for the personal seemed to surprise him. He realized it; and told himself he must watch out for it.

"What does any one look for, Mr. Herrick?" she returned.

"Why, what she hasn't got," Dave replied practically. "What didn't you have, Miss Netley?"

There he had done it again with her; and more baldly.

"What you evidently found here," Fidelia answered, "since you've stayed. But that answer doesn't tell anything to you; for you've found so much—fame and riches and Miss Sothron."

Dave colored slightly, not because of her mention of Alice but because till that mention he had completely forgotten Alice. He looked away from Fidelia Netley to the corner ahead where frequently he met Alice and where he expected to find her this morning; he did not see her and he gazed at Fidelia, catching her eyes for a brief, friendly glance.

"I never heard so little called fame and fortune before, Miss Netley," he objected, smiling; and she smiled and they agreed, in that glance, to let the argument go.

"Miss Netley," he called her; but to himself he thought: "Fidelia Netley."

He had not liked her name when Alice told it to him, but it had interested him; now he liked it. It seemed a particularly exuberant sort of name fitting to this most unusual girl. When she spoke, or when he did, she always looked at him but when she gazed