an emotion with her. When she laughs, her laugh is like a cry. Haven't you
noticed that? Startle her, and her eyes are the very eyes of fear. Mother
was wise, I think, not to pour those old sorrows into her little fragile
cup."

"So she emptied them all into yours!"

"That was my right, of the elder and stronger. I wouldn't have missed the
knowledge of our beginnings for the world. What a prosperous fool and ass
I might have made of myself!"

"Morbid again," said Moya. "You belong to your own day and generation. You
might as well wear country shoes and clothes because your father wore
them."

"Still, if we have such a thing in this country as class, then you and I
do not belong to the same class except by virtue of Uncle Jacob's money.
Confess you are glad I am a Bevier and a Broderick and a Van Elten, as
well as a Bogardus."

"I shall confess nothing of the kind. Now you do talk like a _nouveau_
Paul, dear," said Moya, with her caressing eyes on his--they had paused
under the lamp at the top of the steps--"I think your father must have
been a very good man."

"All our fathers were," Paul averred, smiling at her earnestness.

"Yes, but yours in particular; because _you_ are an angel; and your mother
is quite human, is she not?--almost as human as I am? That carriage of the
head,--if that does not mean the world!"--