ew
deliberately select a pasture, select a line of procedure in that
pasture and keep to it, concentrating upon what is useful to us, and
that alone. So it was excellent experience for Mildred to sit down and
think connectedly and with wholly absorbed mind upon the phase of her
career most important at the moment. When she had worked out all the
plans that had promise in them she went tranquilly to sleep, a stronger
and a more determined person, for she had said with the energy that
counts: "I shall see him, somehow. If none of these schemes works,
I'll work out others. He's got to see me."

But it was no occult "bearing down" that led him to order her admitted
the instant her card came. He liked her; he wished to see her again;
he felt that it was the decent thing, and somehow not difficult gently
but clearly to convey to her the truth. On her side she, who had
looked forward to the interview with some nervousness, was at her ease
the moment she faced him alone in that inner office. He had
extraordinary personal charm--more than Ransdell, though Ransdell had
the charm invariably found in a handsome human being with the
many-sided intellect that gives lightness of mind. Crossley was not
intellectual, not in the least. One had only to glance at him to see
that he was one of those men who reserve all their intelligence for the
practical sides of the practical thing that forms the basis of their
material career. He knew something of many things, had a wonderful
assortment of talents--could sing, could play piano or violin, could
compose, could act, could do mystifying card tricks, could order
women's clothes as discriminatingly as he could order his own--all
these things a little, but nothing much except making a success of
musical comedy and comic opera. He had an ambition, carefully
restrained in a closet of his mind, where it could not issue forth and
interfere with his business. This ambition was to be a giver of grand
opera on a superb scale. He regarded himself as a mere
money-maker--was not ashamed of this, but neither was he proud of it.
His ambition then represented a dream of a rise to something more than
business man, to friend and encourager and wet nurse to art.

Mildred Gower had happened to set his imagination to working. The
discovery that she was one of those whose personalities rouse high
expectations only to mock them had been a severe blow to his confidence
in his own judgment. Though