yours," Kendal repeated. "Can't
you think of them apart?"

"No, I can't," Elfrida interrupted; "I've tried, and I
can _not_. I know it's a weakness--at least I'm half
persuaded that it is--but I must have the personal standard
in everything."

"But you are a hero-worshipper; often I have seen you
at it."

"Yes," she said cynically, while the white-capped maid
who handed Kendal asparagus stared at her with a curiosity
few of the Hyacinth's lady diners inspired, "and when I
look into that I find it is because of a secret
consciousness that tells me that I, in the hero's place,
should have done just the same thing. Or else it is
because of the gratification my vanity finds in my sympathy
with his work, whatever it is. Oh, it is no special
virtue, my kind of hero-worship." The girl looked across
at Kendal and laughed a bright, frank laugh, in which
was no discontent with what she had been telling him.

"You are candid," Kendal said.

"Oh yes, I'm candid. I don't mind lying for a noble end,
but it isn't a noble end to deceive one's self."

"'Oh, purblind race of miserable men--'" Kendal began
lightly, but she stopped him.

"Don't!" she cried. "Nothing spoils conversation like
quotations. Besides, that's such a trite one; I learned
it at school."

But Kendal's offence was clearly in his manner. It seemed
to Elfrida that he would never sincerely consider what
she had to say about herself. She went on softly, holding
him with her eyes: "You may find me a simple creature--"

"_A propos_," laughed Kendal easily, "what is this
particular noble end?"

"Bah!" she said, "you are right It was a lie, and it had
no end at all. I am complex enough, I dare say. But this
is true, that my egotism is like a little flame within
me. All the best things feed it, and it is so clear that
I see everything in its light. To me it is most dear
and valuable, it simplifies things so. I assure you I
wouldn't be one of the sloppy, unselfish people the world
is full of for anything."

"As a source of gratification isn't it rather limited?"
Kendal asked. He was thinking of the extra drop of nervous
fluid in Americans that he had been reading about in the
afternoon, and wondering if it often had this development.

"I don't quite know what you mean," Elfrida returned.
"It isn't a source of gratification, it's a channel. And
it intensifies everything so that I don't care how little
comes that way. If there's anything of me left when I