with
me. And I support the crossing sweeper at Lansdowne Passage because she
once said she felt sorry for him. I do all the other absurd things that
a man in love tortures himself by doing. But to what end? She knows how
I care, and yet she won't see why we can't go on being friends as we
once were. What's the use of it all?"

"She is young, I tell you," repeated Miss Cavendish, "and she's too sure
of you. You've told her you care; now try making her think you don't
care."

Carroll shook his head impatiently.

"I will not stoop to such tricks and pretence, Marion," he cried
impatiently. "All I have is my love for her; if I have to cheat and to
trap her into caring, the whole thing would be degraded."

Miss Cavendish shrugged her shoulders and walked to the door. "Such
amateurs!" she exclaimed, and banged the door after her.

Carroll never quite knew how he had come to make a confidante of Miss
Cavendish. Helen and he had met her when they first arrived in London,
and as she had acted for a season in the United States, she adopted
the two Americans--and told Helen where to go for boots and hats, and
advised Carroll about placing his plays. Helen soon made other friends,
and deserted the artists, with whom her work had first thrown her. She
seemed to prefer the society of the people who bought her paintings, and
who admired and made much of the painter. As she was very beautiful and
at an age when she enjoyed everything in life keenly and eagerly, to
give her pleasure was in itself a distinct pleasure; and the worldly
tired people she met were considering their own entertainment quite
as much as hers when they asked her to their dinners and dances, or
to spend a week with them in the country. In her way, she was as
independent as was Carroll in his, and as she was not in love, as he
was, her life was not narrowed down to but one ideal. But she was not
so young as to consider herself infallible, and she had one excellent
friend on whom she was dependent for advice and to whose directions she
submitted implicitly. This was Lady Gower, the only person to whom Helen
had spoken of Carroll and of his great feeling for her. Lady Gower,
immediately after her marriage, had been a conspicuous and brilliant
figure in that set in London which works eighteen hours a day to keep
itself amused, but after the death of her husband she had disappeared
into the country as completely as though she had entered a convent,
and after seve