“But, of course, she was not like the girls he had met. He used to write to her at first how disgusted he was when those elegant young ladies would pet him and make much of him and use him and his time as they did everything else in their beautiful, idle lives. He did not like it, he said; and then I suppose it amused him, and then fascinated him. They would not let him alone. They wanted him to put them in his stories, and he had to go to their dinners and to the opera with them. He said they wanted someone to ‘show off’; and at first he resented it, but little by little he came to like it and to find it the life he had needed and longed for, and to forget and despise the simpler one he had known in his youth----” She stopped again and pulled nervously at the silk fringe of the curtain, and looked at the strained faces of the girls as if asking them whether she had been just in her way of putting the thing. And then she hurried on. “And so she released him. He had not been back in two years--not since he had first gone away, and she knew it would be easier to do it [Illustration: “THEY WANTED HIM TO PUT THEM IN HIS STORIES”] before she saw him again. And so when she heard of his success and how popular he was, and that he was the most talked about of all the younger authors, she wrote him that she could not be his wife. But she loved him, and she let him see it in the letter. She bent her pride that far--and she was a proud girl! She told herself over and over that he was not worthy of her--that success had made a failure of him, but she loved him still and she let him see it. She determined to give him and herself that chance. If he still loved her he would know from that letter that she, too, loved him. Well, his answer--she told me that his answer was very cold and short. That if she wished to give him up he knew she must have some good reason.” Someone stirred uneasily, and gave a breathless sort of gasp. “That was hard,” she went on. She was speaking now in an impassive sort of way. “But that was not the hardest. She saw him again. It was not long ago----” She stopped and put one hand to her throat. “She had gone away. She desired to become what he had wished she was, although she could never be anything to him again, and she was succeeding, and thought that perhaps she would forget and be happy. But he found out where she was, and went to her. Something had gone wrong with him. You remember--he was reported to be engaged to a young girl very well known in society--the daughter of a senator, and a great beauty. Well, there was some mistake. He came straight to my friend and told her that he did not know what he had been doing, that she was the only girl he had ever loved and he asked her forgiveness. He told her that his life would be worthless and ruined, that his success would mean less than nothing to him if she did not love him, and he implored her to be what she had once been to him and to marry him.”