er the shining hair, was spiritual and unearthly. Hannaford
would have given his life for her, happily, just then.

"I don't know what others believe," he said. "I have seen for a long
time now, almost since the first, that you were a very innocent sort of
girl enjoying yourself in a new way, and losing your head over it a
little. Perhaps because I've been down in the depths we talked about,
and look on life differently from what I did before, I may have clearer
sight. I don't know what you did or were until you came here, but I've
realized to-night all of a sudden that you are absolutely a child. There
is no worldly knowledge in you. You're what I said. You're Galatea."

"_You_ see this, without any telling," she cried. "And yet----" She bit
her lip and kept back the words that would have rushed out, to shame
her. But he knew with the unerring knowledge of one who loves, that she
had nearly added: "And yet the one man who ought to understand me, does
not. It is only you."

It was a bitter knowledge, but he faced it, hating the other man, who
had hurt and did not deserve her. But he did not guess that the man was
Prince Vanno Della Robbia. He had not heard Vanno almost commanding Mary
to dance with him, and had not seen them go up on the bridge together.
Hannaford was not even aware that they knew each other. The man in his
mind was Dick Carleton, or possibly the Maharajah of Indorwana, whom
some women found strangely attractive.

"I should like to be the one to make all others see--any fools or brutes
who don't," he said.

"I don't want anybody _made_ to see."

"Of course you don't. Well, there isn't one anywhere about worthy to
think of you at all--not a man Jack of us--including me."

"And yet," Mary said, almost pitifully, "I have _liked_ men to think
about me! It's been so new, and interesting. What harm have men done me,
that I should avoid them, just because they are men? Are they all so
much worse than women, I wonder? Oughtn't we to be nice and sweet to
them? It would seem so ungrateful to be cold, because they are so very,
very kind to us. At least, that is what I felt till now--I mean till
quite lately. Men interested me, because they seemed rather mysterious,
so different from us; and I wanted to find out what they were really
like, for I've been with women all my life. I wish now--that is, I hope
I haven't behaved in ways to make people misunderstand?"

"Only fools, as I said before."

"But--what