"The medium was distorted. Excited feelings are the eyes' magnifying
glasses."

"It may be so." There was a modification in Hendrickson's manner. "I
was excited. How could I help being so?"

"There existed no cause for it, Paul. Mr. Dexter had an equal right
with yourself to visit Miss Loring."

"True."

"And an equal right to choose his own time."

"I will not deny it."

"Therefore, there was no reason in the abstract, why his
complimentary call upon the lady should create in your mind
unpleasant feelings towards the man. You had no more right to
complain of his presence there, than he had to complain of yours."

"I confess it."

"There is one thing," pursued Mrs. Denison, "in which you disappoint
me, Paul. You seem to lack a manly confidence in yourself. You are
as good as Leon Dexter--aye, a better, truer man in every sense of
the word--a man to please a woman at all worth pleasing, far better
than he. And yet you permit him to elbow you aside, as it were, and
to thrust you into a false position, if not into obscurity. If Miss
Loring is the woman God has created for you, in the name of all that