metimes I think every one must know.
And I don't care. I've reached that point."

Her confession, naive and shameless, and yet somehow not without a
certain dignity, flowed on. She was mad about Doctor Dick Livingstone.
Goodness knew why, for he never looked at her. She might be the dirt
under his feet for all he knew. She trembled when she met him in the
street, and sometimes he looked past her and never saw her. She didn't
sleep well any more.

Elizabeth listened in great discomfort. She did not see in Clare's
hopeless passion the joy of the flagellant, or the self-dramatization
of a neurotic girl. She saw herself unwillingly forced to peer into
the sentimental windows of Clare's soul, and there to see Doctor Dick
Livingstone, an unconscious occupant. But she had a certain fugitive
sense of guilt, also. Formless as her dreams had been, vague and shy,
they had nevertheless centered about some one who should be tall, like
Dick Livingstone, and alternately grave, which was his professional
manner, and gay, which was his manner when it turned out to be only a
cold, and he could take a few minutes to be himself. Generally speaking,
they centered about some one who resembled Dick Livingstone, but who
did not, as did Doctor Livingstone, assume at times an air of frightful
maturity and pretend that in years gone by he had dandled her on his
knee.

"Sometimes I think he positively avoids me," Clare wailed. "There's
the house, Elizabeth. Do you mind stopping a moment? He must be in his
office now. The light's burning."

"I wish you wouldn't, Clare. He'd hate it if he knew."

She moved on and Clare slowly followed her. The Rossiter girl's flow
of talk had suddenly stopped. She was thoughtful and impulsively
suspicious.

"Look here, Elizabeth, I believe you care for him yourself."

"I? What is the matter with you to-night, Clare?"

"I'm just thinking. Your voice was so queer."

They walked on in silence. The flow of Clare's confidences had ceased,
and her eyes were calculating and a trifle hard.

"There's a good bit of talk about him," she jerked out finally. "I
suppose you've heard it."

"What sort of talk?"

"Oh, gossip. You'll hear it. Everybody's talking about it. It's doing
him a lot of harm."

"I don't believe it," Elizabeth flared. "This town hasn't anything else
to do, and so it talks. It makes me sick."

She did not attempt to analyze the twisted motives that made Clare
belittle what she professed to l