sage from my mother," he hastened to explain as he
stood beside her on the little strip of carpet before the gas stove,
"she sends me to beg that you will dine with us this evening as a
particular favour to her. She is so much alone, you know, that a young
visitor is just what she needs."

Christina continued to regard him, as she had done from the first, with
her sincere, unsmiling eyes, but he saw a flush rise slowly to her face
in a wave of colour, turning the faint pink in her cheeks to crimson.

"I am very much obliged to her," she said, in her fresh attractive
voice, "but I am just in the middle of a story and I cannot break off
just now. I write," she added positively, "every evening."

As she finished she picked up some closely written sheets from the desk
and held them loosely in her hand, enforcing by a gesture the
unalterableness of her decision. "I hope you will give her my love--my
dear love," she said presently, with girlish sweetness, "and tell her
how sorry I am that it is impossible."

"You are writing stories, then--still?" he asked, lingering in the face
of her evident desire to be rid of him.

"Oh, yes, I write all the time--every day."

"But do you find a market for so many?"

She shook her head: "The beginning is always hard--have you never read
the lives of the poets? But when one gives up everything else--when one
has devoted one's whole life--"

Knowing what he did of her mistaken ambition, her fruitless sacrifices,
the thing appeared to him as a terrible and useless tragedy. He saw the
thinness of her figure, the faint lines which her tireless purpose had
written upon her face--and he felt that it was on the tip of his tongue
to beg her to give it up--to reason with her in the tone of a
philosopher and with the experience of the author of an accepted play.
But presently when he spoke, he found that his uttered words were not of
the high and ethical character he had planned.

"She will be very much disappointed, I know," he said at last; and
though he told himself that a great deal of good might be done by a
little perfectly plain speaking, still he did not know how to speak it
nor exactly what it would be.

"Thank her for me--I--I should love to see her oftener if I had the
time--if it were possible," said Christina. And then he went to the door
because he could think of no excuse sufficient to keep him standing
another minute upon the hearthrug.

"I hope you will remember," he sai