cter, but she
had more than once given him a suggestion of an unfathomable power
of calculation, and her silence now had something which it is hardly
extravagant to call portentous. He had of course asked himself how far
it was questionable taste to inform an unprotected girl, for the needs
of a cause, that another man admired her; the thing, superficially, had
an uncomfortable analogy with the shrewdness that uses a cat's paw and
lets it risk being singed. But he decided that even rigid discretion
is not bound to take a young lady at more than her own valuation,
and Christina presently reassured him as to the limits of her
susceptibility. "Mr. Hudson is in love with me!" she said.

Rowland flinched a trifle. Then--"Am I," he asked, "from this point of
view of mine, to be glad or sorry?"

"I don't understand you."

"Why, is Hudson to be happy, or unhappy?"

She hesitated a moment. "You wish him to be great in his profession? And
for that you consider that he must be happy in his life?"

"Decidedly. I don't say it 's a general rule, but I think it is a rule
for him."

"So that if he were very happy, he would become very great?"

"He would at least do himself justice."

"And by that you mean a great deal?"

"A great deal."

Christina sank back in her chair and rested her eyes on the cracked
and polished slabs of the pavement. At last, looking up, "You have not
forgotten, I suppose, that you told me he was engaged?"

"By no means."

"He is still engaged, then?"

"To the best of my belief."

"And yet you desire that, as you say, he should be made happy by
something I can do for him?"

"What I desire is this. That your great influence with him should
be exerted for his good, that it should help him and not retard him.
Understand me. You probably know that your lovers have rather a restless
time of it. I can answer for two of them. You don't know your own mind
very well, I imagine, and you like being admired, rather at the expense
of the admirer. Since we are really being frank, I wonder whether I
might not say the great word."

"You need n't; I know it. I am a horrible coquette."

"No, not a horrible one, since I am making an appeal to your generosity.
I am pretty sure you cannot imagine yourself marrying my friend."

"There 's nothing I cannot imagine! That is my trouble."

Rowland's brow contracted impatiently. "I cannot imagine it, then!" he
affirmed.

Christina flushed faintly; then, very gentl