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ET DEAM VIDIMUS

preferably at night, as then there was little chance of rattlesnakes; and even should she happen to step on one there would not be so much danger.

"Father wouldn't see anything wrong with that point of view," she declared. For herself, she seemed to find it, like the others, exceedingly amusing. She seemed to like these people, even the lady at Nice of whom Carron had serious doubts, but she did not look on them as friends. There was a fine line drawn there. It was the rare thing about her that she could live in the mixed crowd of humanity, like it, have so few illusions about it, yet in the midst of it keep herself so untouched, and cherish so intensely ideals and illusions that were all her own.

He had seen the sentiment she had and the fancies,—the sensitiveness, almost morbid, with which she assumed her own nature to everything that grew and lived, without sound, or, at least, without a human voice. But this she kept separate from her outward living. Deeply and ineradicably secretive she was, afraid lest any unsympathetic touch or thought come near something she loved! She had turned cold eyes on Ferrier. Her tolerant friendship had disappeared, and she drove him away from her presence with icy words and looks. Carron, to whom this man had never been more than a vague

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