e at her face; she was
smiling. Was it in the pleasure of literary creation--an artistic
ecstasy? I should have liked to answer yes, but I doubted it very much.
Without pretending to Miss Liston's powers, I have the little subtlety
that is needful to show me that more than one kind of smile may be seen
on the human face, and that there is one very different from others;
and finally, that that one is not evoked, as a rule, merely by the
evolution of the troublesome encumbrance in pretty writing, vulgarly
called a "plot."

"If," pursued Miss Liston, "some one comes who can appreciate him and
draw out what is best in him----"

"That's all very well," said I, "but what of the first girl?"

"Oh, she's--she can be made shallow, you know; and I can put in a man
for her. People needn't be much interested in her."

"Yes, you could manage it that way," said I, thinking how Pamela--I
took the liberty of using her name for the shallow girl--would like
such treatment.

"She will really be valuable mainly as a foil," observed Miss Liston;
and she added generously, "I shall make her nice, you know, but
shallow--not worthy of him."

"And what are you going to make the other girl like?" I asked.

Miss Liston started slightly; also she colored very slightly, and she
answered, looking away from me across the lawn, "I haven't quite made
up my mind yet, Mr. Wynne."

With the suspicion which this conversation aroused fresh in my mind, it
was curious to hear Pamela laugh, as she said to me on the afternoon of
the same day, "Aren't Sir Gilbert and Audrey Liston funny? I tell you
what, Mr. Wynne, I believe they're writing a novel together."

"Perhaps Chillington's giving her the materials for one," I suggested.

"I shouldn't think," observed Pamela, in her dispassionate way, "that
anything very interesting had ever happened to him."

"I. thought you liked him," I remarked, humbly.

"So I do. What's that got to do with it?" asked Pamela.

It was beyond question that Chillington enjoyed Miss Liston's society;
the interest she showed in him was incense to his nostrils. I used to
overhear fragments of his ideas about himself, which he was revealing
in answer to her tactful inquiries. But neither was it doubtful that he
had by no means lost his relish for Pamela's lighter talk; in fact, he
seemed to turn to her with some relief--perhaps it is refreshing to
escape from self-analysis, even when the process is conducted in the
pleasant