“Very good. I like your frankness. It ‘s quite true. You see, I am a strange girl. To begin with, I am frightfully egotistical. Don’t flatter yourself you have said anything very clever if you ever take it into your head to tell me so. I know it much better than you. So it is, I can’t help it. I am tired to death of myself; I would give all I possess to get out of myself; but somehow, at the end, I find myself so vastly more interesting than nine tenths of the people I meet. If a person wished to do me a favor I would say to him, ‘I beg you, with tears in my eyes, to interest me. Be strong, be positive, be imperious, if you will; only be something,--something that, in looking at, I can forget my detestable self!’ Perhaps that is nonsense too. If it is, I can’t help it. I can only apologize for the nonsense I know to be such and that I talk--oh, for more reasons than I can tell you! I wonder whether, if I were to try, you would understand me.” “I am afraid I should never understand,” said Rowland, “why a person should willingly talk nonsense.” “That proves how little you know about women. But I like your frankness. When I told you the other day that you displeased me, I had an idea you were more formal,--how do you say it?--more guinde. I am very capricious. To-night I like you better.” “Oh, I am not guinde,” said Rowland, gravely. “I beg your pardon, then, for thinking so. Now I have an idea that you would make a useful friend--an intimate friend--a friend to whom one could tell everything. For such a friend, what would n’t I give!” Rowland looked at her in some perplexity. Was this touching sincerity, or unfathomable coquetry? Her beautiful eyes looked divinely candid; but then, if candor was beautiful, beauty was apt to be subtle. “I hesitate to recommend myself out and out for the office,” he said, “but I believe that if you were to depend upon me for anything that a friend may do, I should not be found wanting.” “Very good. One of the first things one asks of a friend is to judge one not by isolated acts, but by one’s whole conduct. I care for your opinion--I don’t know why.” “Nor do I, I confess,” said Rowland with a laugh. “What do you think of this affair?” she continued, without heeding his laugh. “Of your ball? Why, it ‘s a very grand affair.” “It ‘s horrible--that ‘s what it is! It ‘s a mere rabble! There are people here whom I never saw before, people who were never asked. Mamma went about inviting every one, asking other people to invite any one they knew, doing anything to have a crowd. I hope she is satisfied! It is not my doing. I feel weary, I feel angry, I feel like crying. I have twenty minds to escape into my room and lock the door and let mamma go through with it as she can. By the way,” she added in a moment, without a visible reason for the transition, “can you tell me something to read?” Rowland stared, at the disconnectedness of the question.