since sent two letters back unopened, and though you mightn't think it,
I was just eating my heart out for a sight of him. But what's the
good! He's got to follow in the footsteps of whole centuries of highly
respectable, complacent, fat old bankers. His father and mother would
have a fit if he didn't develop into the traditional fat old banker
himself, and beget another of the same ilk to follow on.

"I daresay with me he would have developed a little more soul, and a
little less stomach - but what of it? -" with a graceful shrug. "For
the good of his country it is written that he shall acquire weight and
stolidity, instead of an ideal soul, and for the benefit of posterity I
sentenced him to speedy rotundity, and dull respectability, and the
begetting of future bankers. He will presently marry some one named
Alice or Annie, and invite me to the first christening in a spirit of
Christian forgiveness."

Hal smiled more soberly than was her wont.

"And what of you?"

"What of me?... Oh, I don't come into that sort of scheme. I never
ought to have been there at all. Still, I'm glad I showed him he'd got
something in himself beside the stale accumulations of many banker
ancestors; if it's only for the sake of the next litte banker, who may
want to lay claim to an individual soul."

"But it hurt, Lorraine?... don't tell me it didn't hurt after... after
- "

"Oh yes, it hurt," with a low, bitter laugh; "but what of that eiter?