particular.

"I think you have too many friends," he said to her once, at the
conclusion of an evening party at her own house. They were sitting in
a balcony looking out on to the square, where the trees were stirring
in the light morning wind.

"That's curious," she said. "I never feel as if I had enough; I have
room enough in my heart for the whole world." And she spread out her
hands to the great city with all her lights glaring before them.
"God knows I love you all, though I don't know you," she said with a
sudden impulse.

They were silent for a moment.

Then she resumed: "Tell me why you said that," she said. "I like to
be told the truth."

"_You_ may feel large enough," he said, "but they don't appreciate
your capacity; they feel hurt and slighted. Why, only to-night, during
the ten minutes I was talking to you, you spoke and dismissed eight
people, every one of whom was jealous of me, and thinking 'Who's the
new man?' And I began to wonder how I should feel if I came here and
found a new man installed by you, and got a handshake and a smile."

"Shall I tell you?" she said, looking at him. "I should give you a
look which would mean, 'I would give anything to have a quiet talk to
you, Mr. Hamilton, but the exigencies of society oblige me to be
civil to this person.'"

"Yes," he said, "and that's just what I complain of; it gives me, the
new man to-night, a feeling of insecurity--that perhaps you are just
'carrying on' with me because it is your whim, and that the instant
I bore you, you will throw me away like a broken toy, and with even
less regret."

"How dare you speak like that to me?" she said, turning upon him
almost fiercely. "I never forget people." And she rose and went
quickly into the room, and didn't speak to him for the rest of the
evening.

But just as he was going out he passed her, and hardly looked at her,
thinking he had offended her; but she came and put out her hand
quickly, and said, almost pathetically--

"You must forgive me for my behaviour to-night, Mr. Hamilton. What
you said was not true, but you meant it to be true; you believed it.
And please don't stop talking to me openly. I value it very much.
I have so few people to tell me the truth."

I find this conversation narrated in his diary, almost word for word
as I have given it. But there is omitted from it, necessarily
perhaps, the most pregnant comment of all.

"And yet," he said to me once, as he turned to leave t