y.

"You can let me send you," he said quietly. "It's folly to keep up this
pretense any longer, Eleanor. You love me, don't you?"

"I--I like you," faltered Eleanor, "better than almost anybody. But I am
never going to marry; I don't think I shall ever care for anybody--that
way."

He watched her with an amused practised glance. "We won't talk about it
now," he said lightly. "We will talk instead of your career. You remember
that night at Ran's when you recited for me? I can hear you now saying
those lines:

'Or if thou think'st I am too quickly won
I'll frown and be perverse, and say thee nay.'

For days I was haunted by the beauty and subtlety of your voice, the
unconscious grace of your poses, your little tricks of coquetry, and the
play of your eyebrows."

"Did you really see all that in me the first night?"

"I saw more. I saw that, if taken in time, you were destined to be a
great actress. I swore then and there that you should have your chance,
and that I should be the one to give it to you."

"But----"

"No. Don't answer me now. You are like a little bud that's afraid to open
its petals. Once you get out of this chilling atmosphere of criticism and
opposition, you will burst into glorious bloom."

"But it would mean a terrible break with the family. I don't believe I
can----"

"Yes, you can. I know you better than you know yourself. If Madam
Bartlett persists in refusing to send you to New York, you are going to
be big enough to let me do it."

He was holding her hand now, and talking with unusual earnestness.
Eleanor thought she had never seen a greater exhibition of magnanimity.
That he was willing to give all and ask for nothing, to be patient with
her vacillations, and understand and sympathize with what everybody else
condemned in her, touched her greatly. She turned to him impulsively.

"I'll do whatever you say," she said. "You and Papa Claude go ahead and
make the arrangements, and I promise you I'll come."

Harold Phipps should have left it there; but Eleanor was never more
irresistible than when she was in a yielding mood, and now, when she
lifted starry eyes of gratitude, he tumbled off his pedestal of noble
detachment, and drew her suddenly into his arms.

In an instant her soft mood vanished. She scrambled hastily to her feet
and got out of the car.

"I am going in," she said abruptly. "I'm cold."

Harold laughingly followed. "Cold?" he repeated in his laziest tone. "M