what had gone before."

We were all of us strong in quotations in those days; accordingly I
quoted--

"Peter was dull: he was at first
Dull--oh, so dull! so very dull!
Whether he talked, wrote or rehearsed,
Still with the dulness was he cursed--
Dull--beyond all conception dull."

"Oh, how clever!" she exclaimed. "Did you write it?"

"Well, no: I think not."

"But you can do such things. You are so clever, everything is easy to you.
That is why I always liked you better than any one else. You have
sympathy, wit, imagination. You understand things up to the heights and
down to the depths. Harry Dart is a little like you: he has wit and
imagination, but he is flippant, he has no sympathy. Poor old Jack has
plenty of sympathy, but neither wit nor imagination."

"Nevertheless," said I, trying to control my voice, "it is Jack who has
won you: the rest of us are nowhere. He is the lucky one of us three."

"Do you think him lucky?" she asked with a trembling, uncertain little
laugh. "I am very grateful to him for trying to win me: not many would
have done it, knowing all the circumstances of my family--all our faults
and humiliations. I am not like other girls, Floyd. They may fall in love,
and strive and hope and wait, with poetic dreams and trembling desires, to
end in rapturous fulfilment. Not so with me. I must marry early, and
marry a man who has wealth, to help those who expect everything from me.
My destiny came to me ready-made: I accepted it. The poetry and the
romance and the wild wish to love and be loved, as I might be if I could
afford to wait, were all put by for hard, practical common sense."

I could see only the sweet pathetic droop of the lips, for her face was
turned away and downward. There was a moment's silence between us, but she
broke it with another of those uncertain little laughs and a glance at me.
"I don't know why I have told you this," she said softly. "Don't think I
under-value Jack. He has all the best qualities a man can possess for
success in life, but none of those essential for winning a woman's heart.
Why, Floyd--But tell me, could you do your stupid old lessons with me
looking over you?"

Our eyes met, and we both laughed: I shook my head.

"Oh, but Jack can," she cried triumphantly. "He amuses me that way
sometimes, and my fascinations never disturb the even tenor of his
thoughts: he will plod on with his foolish old mathematics with my head on
his s