lay there. Herbert Minks might have been a fine, successful mother
perhaps. The one drawback to the physiognomy was that the mild blue
eyes were never quite united in their frank gaze. He squinted
pleasantly, though his wife told him it was a fascinating cast rather
than an actual squint. The chin, too, ran away a little from the
mouth, and the lips were usually parted. There was, at any rate, this
air of incompatibility of temperament between the features which, made
all claim to good looks out of the question.

That runaway chin, however, was again deceptive. It did, indeed run
off, but the want of decision it gave to the countenance seemed
contradicted by the prominent forehead and straight eyebrows, heavily
marked. Minks knew his mind. If sometimes evasive rather than
outspoken, he could on occasion be surprisingly firm. He saw life very
clearly. He could certainly claim the good judgment stupid people
sometimes have, due perhaps to their inability to see alternatives--
just as some men's claim to greatness is born of an audacity due to
their total lack of humour.

Minks was one of those rare beings who may be counted on--a quality
better than mere brains, being of the heart. And Henry Rogers
understood him and read him like an open book. Preferring the steady
devotion to the brilliance a high salary may buy, he had watched him
for many years in every sort of circumstance. He had, by degrees, here
and there, shown an interest in his life. He had chosen his private
secretary well. With Herbert Minks at his side he might accomplish
many things his heart was set upon. And while Minks bumped down in his
third-class crowded carriage to Sydenham, hunting his evasive sonnet,
Henry Rogers glided swiftly in a taxi-cab to his rooms in St. James's
Street, hard on the trail of another dream that seemed, equally, to