gravely.
"Ever since I can remember I've been thinking--thinking and planning
what I should do when I grew up. It seemed such a long, long
time--being just a little girl, I mean, and not able to do what I
wished. But I kept on thinking and planning, and all the while I
_was_ growing up; and then at last--it all happened as I wished."

She appeared to wait for his question. But he remained silent,
staring at the blue rim of distant hills.

"You don't ask me--you don't seem to care what I was planning," she
said, her voice timid and uncertain.

He glanced quickly at her. Something in her look stirred him
curiously. It did not occur to him that her appeal and his instant
response to it were as old as the race.

"I wish you would tell me," he urged. "Tell me everything!"

She drew a deep breath, her eyes misty with dreams.

"For a long time I taught school," she went on, "but I couldn't save
enough that way. I never could have saved enough, even if I had lived
on bread and water. I wanted--I needed a great deal of money, and I
wasn't clever nor particularly well educated. Sometimes I thought if
I could only marry a millionaire--"

He stared at her incredulously.

"You don't mean that," he said with some impatience.

She sighed.

"I'm telling you just what happened," she reminded him. "It seemed
the only way to get what I wanted. I thought I shouldn't mind that,
or--anything, if I could only have as much money as I needed."

A sense of sudden violent anger flared up within him. Did the girl
realize what she was saying?

She glanced up at him.

"I never meant to tell any one about that part of it," she said
hurriedly. "And--it wasn't necessary, after all; I got the money
another way."

He bit off the point of a pencil he had been sharpening with
laborious care.

"I should probably never have had a chance to marry a millionaire,"
she concluded reminiscently. "I'm not beautiful enough."

With what abominable clearness she understood the game: the
marriage-market; the buyer and the price.

"I--didn't suppose you were like that," he muttered, after what
seemed a long silence.

She seemed faintly surprised.

"Of course you don't know me," she said quickly. "Does any man know
any woman, I wonder?"

"They think they do," he stated doggedly; "and that amounts to the
same thing."

His thoughts reverted for an uncomfortable instant to Wesley Elliot
and Fanny. It was only too easy to see through Fanny.