rds, which I do not doubt, with your face and your
twenty-one years."

"And why not?"

"Do not consider it a tasteless compliment: but with such a face, I
should hardly think a person could live twenty-one years in the world,
without at least perceiving in others, what mad follies a man
desperately in love may commit. And have you never been moved when you
made some one unhappy, even if your own heart remained untouched? You
have probably known nothing of hunger except from hearsay, and yet the
sight of misery touches you."

"Certainly," she answered thoughtfully; "but you're mistaken, if you
suppose I have never suffered want myself. There have been times--but
that's my own affair. On the contrary, the love that has been offered
me has either seemed untrue and ridiculous, or excited actual horror
and loathing, never compassion."

Edwin's surprise increased at every word, whose sincerity he could not
doubt. But if it were as she said and her grave innocent gaze
confirmed--how had she come to these suspicious lodgings in such more
than doubtful company? What, if she had nothing to repent, was the
cause of this avoidance of men, this mysterious love of solitude in one
so young and independent?

He noticed that she looked surprised at his silence, and in order to
make some remark, said:

"If you place so little value on the passion, which since the beginning
of creation has, with hunger, been the motive power of the world, your
purveyor of romances certainly has a difficult task. Or would you
prefer novels of the latest style, which only contain enough love not
to frighten the owners of circulating libraries?"

"No," she replied laughing, "I'm not quite so spoiled. Dear me, what I
read aloud to my dear father was always French literature, which often,
as I noticed by his making me skip a chapter, was by no means fit for a
young girl. But do you know what I don't understand? Why the authors
don't have a better appreciation of their advantages and write only
stories which contain very elegant, rich, brilliant scenes, handsome
parks, castles, numerous servants, and fireworks, concerts, and balls
every night. I should never weary of such books, as when a child I
could always read over and over again the fairy tales, in which a fairy
or magician builds in a single night a splendid palace of gold and
jewels, with the horses' mangers of silver, and their hoofs studded
with diamonds. Ought not poetry to describe a fairer