“It is silly of me,” she replied with a bright smile.
She could not undeceive him. Often a woman by reason of her sex has to receive what she knows is not her due. But she compensates the eternal justice of things by giving up more of her truest self to the man. A few moments later, however, on their homeward walk, she tried to be conscientious.
“I cannot bear you to praise me--as you do sometimes.”
A man, even the most sympathetic, is seldom satisfied unless he has reasons for everything. Katherine, in spite of her seriousness, smiled at the masculine directness. She replied somewhat earnestly,--
“Because I do not deserve it in the first place, and in the second, it means so much more, coming from you.”
“I said that those old folks adore you, and that you are tender-hearted,” he answered conclusively; “and both facts are true, and it would be a bad day for anyone but yourself who gainsaid them.”
“Of the development of human phenomena, two truisms may be stated. First, a man can seldom gauge its progress, the self of to-day differing so infinitely little from the self of yesterday. And secondly, the climax is seldom reached by a man's own initiative. He seems blindly and unconsciously to depend upon that law of averages which assigns an indefinite number of external contingencies to act upon and to complete any given process.”
Raine had jotted down this among some rough notes for a series of lectures in Metaphysics he was preparing, when his father's voice broke a silence that had lasted nearly an hour.
“I am reading that letter you wrote to ----.”
As the old man did not reply at first, but continued reading the letter which he held out before him, Raine closed his note-book, and went round behind his father's chair, and looked over his shoulder.
“Oh, that one. You must have thought me idiotic. I half fancy I did it to puzzle you.”
“I wasn't puzzled, my dear boy. I guessed. And does the magnet still attract?”
It was the first time he had referred to the matter. His voice was a little husky as he asked the question--it seemed to be a liberty that he was taking with Raine. He looked up at him deprecatingly, touching the hand that was on his shoulder.
“Don't think me an inquisitive old man,” he added, smiling to meet the affectionate look on his son's face.