Mr. Bulstrode. Girls like me always have ideals. It
is fame with some, money with others, dress and a social craze for a
lot of them. But with me, ever since you came it has been
YOU--everything you said to me twelve years ago I have remembered.
Silly as it seems, I could almost tell the very words. I have seen a
lot of men since, too many," she said, "and known them too well. But I
have never seen anybody like you."

Bulstrode tried to stop her.

"But no," she pleaded, "let me go on. I've dreamed I might grow great,
and that some day you would see me play and that I should play so well
that you would go crazy about me! I have thought this really, and I
have lived for it, really--until--until----"

As he did not question her or interrupt, she went on:

"I said it was an ideal. Thinking of you and what I'd like to grow for
you kept me, in spite of everything--and I fancy you know in my
profession what that means--good."

Here Felicia Warren met his eyes frankly with the same look of entire
innocence with which she might have met his eyes under the willows near
her father's mill.

"I've been so horribly afraid that when you _did_ come there might be
heaps of things you would not like that I have been awfully hard on
myself, awfully!"

She was lacing and unlacing her slender fingers as she talked.

"I went to Paris this spring because I saw that you were there, and
after passing you several times in the Bois and seeing that as far as I
could judge you were just the same as you had been, I took a new
courage hoping, waiting, for you, and being the best I knew. It seems
awfully queer to hear a woman talk like this to a man," she understood
it herself--"but you see I am used to speaking in public and I suppose
it is easier for me than for most women."

Bulstrode, more eager than anything else to know what her life had
really been, surprised and incredulous at everything she said, broke in
here:

"But this--this man?"

"Oh, Pollona," she replied, "has been there for years, for years. He
has loved me ever since I first made my _debut_ and he follows me
everywhere like a dog. I have never looked at any of them, until this
week."

With a sigh as if she renounced all her dreams, she said: "I grew tired
of my romantic folly. I was ill and nervous and could not play any
more, and that was dreadful. So, when Pollona came to me in Paris this
spring, I gave him a sort of promise. I told him that I was goin