Her manner had the gentle command that queens and princesses and very rich women unconsciously acquire. I tried to obey her, but found little to say. Uttered to her my facts were so meager. I told her of my father and mother, of my father's mania for old books, of Louise and Victoria and their husbands, of my visits abroad; but I felt her attention wandering. That is, I felt she was interested not in my data, but in me. Halifax and Canada and British army and navy life and rare first editions were outside the range of her ken. Paris she knew; and London she knew; but not from any point of view from which I could speak of them. I could see she was the well-placed American who knows some of the great English houses and all of the great English hotels, but nothing of that Britannic backbone of which I might have been called a rib. She broke in presently, not apropos of anything I was saying, with the words: "How old are you?" I told her I was twenty-four. "I'm twenty-nine." I said I had understood as much from Mrs. Rossiter, but that I could easily have supposed her no older than myself. This was true. Had there not been that something mournful in her face which simulates maturity I could have thought of her as nothing but a girl. If I stood in awe of her it was only of what I guessed at as a sorrow. She went on to give me two or three details of her life, with nearly all of which I was familiar through hints from Hugh and Ethel Rossiter. "We're really Philadelphians, my mother and I. We've lived a good deal in New York, of course, and abroad. I was at school in Paris, too, at the Convent des Abeilles." She wandered on, somewhat inconsequentially, with facts of this sort, when she added, suddenly: "I was to have married some one else." I knew then that I had the clue to her thought. The marriage she had missed was on her mind. It created an obsession or a broken heart, I wasn't quite sure which. It was what she wanted to talk about, though her glance fell before the spark of intelligence in mine. [Illustration: THE MARRIAGE SHE HAD MISSED WAS ON HER MIND. IT CREATED AN OBSESSION OR A BROKEN HEART, I WASN'T QUITE SURE WHICH] Since there was nothing I could say in actual words, I merely murmured sympathetically. At the same time there came to me, like the slow breaking of a dawn, an illuminating glimpse of the great J. Howard's life. I seemed to be admitted into its secret, into a perception of its weak spot, more fully than his wife had any notion of. She would never, I was sure, see what she was betraying to me from my point of view. She would never see how she was giving him away. She wouldn't even see how she was giving away herself--she was so sweet, and gentle, and child-like, and unsuspecting. I don't know for how many seconds her quiet, inconsequential speech trickled on without my being able to follow it. I came to myself again, as it were, on hearing her say: "And if you do love him, oh, don't give him up!"