THE HEART-BROKEN MISS WALLACE “Lucile, are you sure?” “Virginia, if you ask me that again, I’ll believe you think I fib. Of course I’m sure!” “Did you see him more than once, Lucile?” “Priscilla, I’ve told you a dozen times that I saw him one whole afternoon long at Versailles. Isn’t that long enough to remember him, I’d like to know?” “And Miss Wallace said when she introduced him—just what did she say, anyhow?” “Vivian Winters, you make me sick! You really do! She said—and this is the twentieth time I’ve told you—she said, ‘Lucile, I want you to meet my dear friend, Mr. Taylor.’” “And what did he say?” “Will you please listen this time, Dorothy, for it’s positively the last time I shall tell you. He said, ‘Any friend of Miss Wallace’s is my friend, too.’ And he gazed at her with his very soul. You forgot he had eyes at all!” The exasperated Lucile leaned back among her pillows, and munched the candy with which she had generously supplied herself. “You really all do make me tired,” she said between her bites. “I’ve told you over and over again that any one could see that he loved her from the way he gazed at her; that the picture she’s had all the year up to six weeks ago on her dresser was his; and that I know her heart is broken. Now, what more can I say?” “It isn’t that we don’t believe you, Lucile,” Virginia hastened to explain. “It’s just—well, you see you do have a very romantic tendency, and—” “Of course, I do. It’s my temperament. I’ve heard father say so a dozen times. Besides, I’ve lived in Paris, and the very stones of Paris breathe romance!” “Well, I really think Lucile is right, sad as it seems. Miss Wallace hasn’t been herself since Easter; and it was just then that the picture disappeared from her dresser. Of course Lucile couldn’t have been with him a whole afternoon and not know his face; and, naturally, she would know how he treated her.” This announcement from Priscilla was not without effect. “Of course I would,” reiterated the encouraged Lucile. “Didn’t I see him gaze at her, and call her ‘Margaret,’ and her, when she called him ‘Bob’?” “Did you see him do anything but gaze?” asked Dorothy, still a little incredulous. “He seems to have gazed all the time.” “Why, of course, right at Versailles, he wouldn’t have taken her hand, or anything like that. A gaze can speak volumes, I’ll have you to know. But when we sailed from Havre, and he stayed to study at the Sorbonne, he put his arms around her and kissed her. It was thrilling!” This new piece of information was indisputable proof, which, placed by the side of the strange disappearance of the said Mr. Taylor’s picture, and the strange and unwonted sadness of Miss Wallace, formed a bulk of evidence, to disbelieve which was folly.