of shadows leaped and fell on the wall behind them. Vance looked at his
sister with concern. There was a certain complacency about her this
evening that told him in advance that she had formed a new plan with
which she was well pleased. And he had come to dread her plans.

She always filled him with awe--and never more so than tonight, with her
thin, homely face illuminated irregularly and by flashes. He kept
watching her from the side, with glances.

"I think I know why you've gone away for these few days," she said.

"To get used to the new idea," he admitted with such frankness that she
turned to him with unusual sympathy. "It was rather a shock at first."

"I know it was. And I wasn't diplomatic. There's too much man in me,
Vance. Altogether too much, while you--"

She closed her lips suddenly. But he knew perfectly the unspoken words.
She was about to suggest that there was too little man in him. He dropped
his chin in his hand, partly for comfort and partly to veil the sneer. If
she could have followed what he had done in the past six days!

"And you are used to the new idea?"

"You see that I'm back before the time was up and ahead of my promise,"
he said.

She nodded. "Which paves the way for another new idea of mine."

He felt that a blow was coming and nerved himself against the shock of