bitions, which could not be shared, and her bitter
knowledge, which was never to be spoken of. But now she stirred
uneasily in her chair, aware of the intent expression in his eyes.
Her troubled thoughts reverted to the little picture which had
fluttered to the floor from somebody's keeping only an hour before.

"I've had visitors this morning," she told him, with purpose.

"Ah! people are sure to be curious and interested," he commented.

"They were Mrs. Dodge and her daughter and Mrs. Dix and Ellen," she
explained.

"That must have been pleasant," he murmured perfunctorily. "Are
you--do you find yourself becoming at all interested in the people
about here? Of course it is easy to see you come to us from quite
another world."

She shook her head.

"Oh, no," she said quickly. "--If you mean that I am superior in any
way to the people of Brookville; I'm not, at all. I am really a very
ordinary sort of a person. I've not been to college and--I've always
worked, harder than most, so that I've had little opportunity
for--culture."

His smile broadened into a laugh of genuine amusement.

"My dear Miss Orr," he protested, "I had no idea of intimating--"

Her look of passionate sincerity halted his words of apology.

"I am very much interested in the people here," she declared. "I
want--oh, so much--to be friends with them! I want it more than
anything else in the world! If they would only like me. But--they
don't."

"How can they help it?" he exclaimed. "Like you? They ought to
worship you! They shall!"

She shook her head sadly.

"No one can compel love," she said.

"Sometimes the love of one can atone for the indifference--even the
hostility of the many," he ventured.

But she had not stooped to the particular, he perceived. Her thoughts
were ranging wide over an unknown country whither, for the moment, he
could not follow. He studied her abstracted face with its strangely
aloof expression, like that of a saint or a fanatic, with a faint
renewal of previous misgivings.

"I am very much interested in Fanny Dodge," she said abruptly.

"In--Fanny Dodge?" he repeated.

He became instantly angry with himself for the dismayed astonishment
he had permitted to escape him, and increasingly so because of the
uncontrollable tide of crimson which invaded his face.

She was looking at him, with the calm, direct gaze which had more
than once puzzled him.

"You know her very well, don't you?"

"Why, of course,