her
about helping Elfrida to place her work with the magazines
had been one of the constant impulses by which she tried
to compensate her friend, as it were, for the amount of
suffering that young woman was inflicting upon her--she
would have found a difficulty in explaining it more
intelligibly than that.

As he settled together the pages of Miss Bell's article
on "The Nemesis of Romanticism" and laid them on the
table, Lawrence Cardiff thought, of it with sincere
regret.

"It is hopeless--hopeless," he said to himself. "It must
be rewritten from end to end. I suppose she must do it
herself," he added, with a smile that he drew from some
memory of her, and he pulled writing materials toward
him to tell her so. Re-reading his brief note, he frowned,
hesitated, and tore it up. The next followed it into the
waste-paper basket. The third gave Elfrida gently to
understand that in Mr. Cardiff's opinion the article was
a little unbalanced--she would remember her demand that
he should be absolutely frank. She had made some delightful
points, but there was a lack of plan and symmetry. If
she would give him the opportunity he would be very happy
to go over it with her, and possibly she would make a
few changes. More than this Cardiff could not induce
himself to say. And he would await her answer before
sending the article back to her.

It came next day, and in response to it Mr. Cardiff
found himself walking, with singular lightness of step,
toward Fleet Street in the afternoon with Elfrida's
manuscript in his pocket. Buddha smiled more inscrutably
than ever as they went over it together, while the water
hissed in the samovar in the corner, and little blue
flames chased themselves in and out of the anthracite in
the grate, and the queer Orientalism of the little room
made its picturesque appeal to Cardiff's senses. He had
never been there before.

From beginning to end they went over the manuscript, he
criticising and suggesting, she gravely listening, and
insatiately spurring him on.

"You may say anything," she declared. "The sharper it is
the better, you know, for me. Please don't be polite--be
savage!" and he did his best to comply.

She would not always be convinced; he had to leave some
points unvanquished; but in the main she agreed and was
grateful. She would remodel the article, she told him,
and she would remember all that he had said. Cardiff
found her recognition of the trouble he had taken
delightfu