is stick upon the
pavement.

"What's the applause for?"

"For you. What you said was like running up the black flag to the
masthead."

"Oh, no. It was just a modest little sign in a pretty flower-bed:
'Gentlemen, beware!'"

"I see I must," he said, gallantly.

"Thanks! But I mean, beware of the whole bloomin' garden!" Then, picking
up a thread that had almost disappeared: "You needn't think you'll ever
find out whether I'm right about Mildred's not being an exception by
asking her," she said. "She won't tell you: she's not the sort that ever
makes a confession."

But Russell had not followed her shift to the former topic. "'Mildred's
not being an exception?'" he said, vaguely. "I don't----"

"An exception about thinking she could be a wonderful thing on the stage
if she only cared to. If you asked her I'm pretty sure she'd say, 'What
nonsense!' Mildred's the dearest, finest thing anywhere, but you won't
find out many things about her by asking her."

Russell's expression became more serious, as it did whenever his cousin
was made their topic. "You think not?" he said. "You think she's----"

"No. But it's not because she isn't sincere exactly. It's only because
she has such a lot to live up to. She has to live up to being a girl
on the grand style to herself, I mean, of course." And without pausing
Alice rippled on, "You ought to have seen ME when I had the stage-fever!
I used to play 'Juliet' all alone in my room.' She lifted her arms in
graceful entreaty, pleading musically,

"O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon,
That monthly changes in her circled orb,
Lest thy love prove----"

She broke off abruptly with a little flourish, snapping thumb and finger
of each outstretched hand, then laughed and said, "Papa used to make
such fun of me! Thank heaven, I was only fifteen; I was all over it by
the next year."

"No wonder you had the fever," Russell observed. "You do it beautifully.
Why didn't you finish the line?"

"Which one? 'Lest thy love prove likewise variable'? Juliet was saying
it to a MAN, you know. She seems to have been ready to worry about his
constancy pretty early in their affair!"

Her companion was again thoughtful. "Yes," he said, seeming to be rather
irksomely impressed with Alice's suggestion. "Yes; it does appear so."

Alice glanced at his serious face, and yielded to an audacious
temptation. "You mustn't take it so hard," she said, flippantly.

"It isn't ab