“I know him better than that. I know things of him that will not be told in newspaper paragraphs and book reviews.” She paused and her face grew whiter. “You read his stories, and because they are the best of their kind, the most correct, the most interesting, because his men are the men you like to know, men who are always as they should be to men, because there is an atmosphere of refinement and elegance and pleasing conventionality about them--you think they must be the reflex of himself. O yes! I know--the very last story--you have all read it--who could be more magnificent and correct than _Roscommon_? And you think _him_ like his hero! There is not one of you but would feel flattered at his attentions, you might easily fall in love with him--I dare say you would scarcely refuse him--and yet”--she broke off suddenly. “There was a girl,” she began after a moment’s hesitation, in a tone from which all the excitement had died, “a friend of mine, and she loved him. Perhaps you do not know that before he became famous he lived in a small Western town--she lived there too. They grew up together, and she was as proud of him--well, you know probably just how proud a girl can be of a boy who has played with her and scolded her and tyrannized over her and protected her and afterward loved her. For he _did_ love her. He told her so a thousand times and he showed it [Illustration: SHE STOPPED AND HER FACE GREW WHITER] to her in a thousand ways. And she loved him! I cannot tell you what he was to her.” They were all looking curiously at her white face and she tried to speak still more calmly. “Well, after a time his ambition--for he was very ambitious and very talented--made him restless. He wanted to go East--he thought he would succeed. She let him go freely, willingly. His success was hers, he said. Everything he was to do was for her, and she let him go, and she told him then that he could be free. But he was very angry. He said that he would never have thought of going but to be better worthy of her. He succeeded--you know--the world knows how well he has succeeded, and the world likes success, and what wonder that he forgot her. She was handsome--at least her friends told her so--but she was not like the girls he knows now. She was not rich, and she had never been used to the life of luxury and worldliness to which he had so quickly accustomed himself. But,” she went on, protestingly, as if in reply to some unspoken argument or some doubt that had assailed her, “she could have been all he wished her. She was quick and good to look at, and well-bred. She could have easily learned the world’s ways--the ways that have become so vital to him.” She stopped, and then went on with an air of careful impartiality, as if trying to be just, to look at both sides of the question, and her beautiful face grew whiter with the effort.